There are so many things I wish I could say to my husband as we approach this life-changing moment. I am further along in the process so could say these things rationally but from the heart. He is too immersed right now in anger and hurt, and is probably surprised that I am not simply going to get past it this time, that life will return to normal within a week or so after this emotional reaction has waned. He could not hear this at this moment. Perhaps someday, he will be able to read this and take in the words. Either way, for me it is important to write them. 

To my soon-to-be-former husband and long-ago-lost best friend,  

As we start down this path towards separating out all the pieces of our life together, I have to let you know that this is not an easy process for me, as much as it seems that way to you. I am sure it feels that I am unfeeling at times, or indifferent to the pain I am causing you. Please know that this could not be further from the truth. It is precisely because I am not indifferent that we have had the past few years, such as they have been, and during that time I have tried all I can to reconnect with you, to find a place to rebuild, some little  corner of the foundation we put in place 20 years ago that still feels secure and stable. At each turn where I feel optimism rising, something happens to make it vanish into mist. I will always be sorry for that, for not finding a way to nurture that hope when it surfaced, ever so briefly.

This has been a year of tremendous introspection and transformation for me, too. While I know you resent it when I say this, my reflection on our marriage and how we have come to where we are keep bringing me back to the same realizations. I never doubted that you loved me, but it has been many, many years since you liked me. I feel this started just weeks after we were married and until the past year, when our son disclosed his cutting, I annoyed you endlessly - by chatting with people everywhere we went, not having dinner ready when you came home, the house not being tidy enough. I disappointed you - by not making enough money, by gaining weight. I made you angry - by confronting you or questioning you when I felt you were being overly harsh with the kids, or with me, by asking you to drive more carefully and more slowly, by commenting on anything since you so often took things as confrontation.

I cannot count the number of times I said, "We can't live like this any longer", yet did nothing effective to stop it. I would just hold back from confronting you and let things lie - you got less angry that way - and time would eventually ease the tension and we would fall back into our regular daily existence again. I knew that our family could only be harmonious if I chose not to respond to feeling hurt by you. This had a serious impact on me personally, and definitely took a fatal toll on our relationship. 

I am seriously asking myself why it is that I can no longer find it within me to try again, to do the necessarily painful and hard work of trying to rebuild our relationship again, brick by brick from the ground up. This is why I began seeing a therapist. I could not live with myself if I did not try every avenue to uncover a new approach or find a path that has been overlooked.

What I have learned is that comes down to an issue of trust, on several fronts. There have been too many experiences over too many years where I have trusted that things are getting better, only to have a sudden shift back to more hurtful patterns. When I would try to address with you how hurt I felt by your words, your tone, and your actions, I really do believe that your angry response came not from a lack of caring that you had hurt me but a sincere belief and perception that you hadn't. The problem for me, though, is that you did hurt me. Very deeply. Sometimes profoundly. And many times. 

What I need you to know is that I will always love you, and I will always feel a deep sense of loss about the end of our marriage. You are not simply imprinted onto the fabric of my life, but woven right into it. Since I was 22 years old, you have been an important part of so many of my experiences and memories. You were the reason I could never go out with the handsome veterinarian, to whom I was so grateful because he was the person who first suggested that I should take a good look at my feelings for you, saying that I was fooling myself when I said that we were "just friends". That encouragement led me to the realization that you were the person I wanted to be with, to grow old with. It was very difficult when it seemed, as time went on, that while you enjoyed our relationship, you never seemed quite as taken with the idea of a long life together as I was. The movie "When Harry Met Sally", that we watched every New Year's Eve, always brought me to tears at that moment ... when Harry says, "when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start right now!". 

I have always worried that I pushed you too hard to make that commitment and to marry me all those years ago, overlooking the reasons you may have had for not wanting that. You always said it was never a question for you, that you had always wanted me in your life and that marriage was what you truly wanted, yet you were so reluctant for so long. I was so focused on how much I loved you, and how many people say they married their best friend but for us, it would be absolutely true. The night we became engaged, I had come to you planning to end the relationship. After two years, and 10 years of friendship before that, I had come to feel that if you didn't know by then that you wanted to marry me, then you probably didn't. As Bonnie Raitt sang so poignantly at the time, "I can't make you love me/ if you don't/ I can't make your heart feel/ something it won't". While it was the last thing I wanted to do, I realized that the short term pain of ending the relationship would be better than continuing on knowing that you didn't want me in the same way I wanted you. But when we talked that night, you already had a ring, and had made your decision. 

It is just about killing me to do something that I know is causing you so much pain. When we have come close to this over the past few years, it is what has pulled me back. But we have to take this path this time. The impact on both of us is too great, and it is nothing short of destructive to the kids. There has been enough of that for all of us. Bonnie Raitt is still right. 

While I will be seen as the "instigator" to some, and the "villain" to others, I know in my heart this is where we have to go. Please do not think I am not feeling tremendous guilt and sadness. Just driving past our favourite restaurant, the one where we spent so many special evenings, puts me into tears every single time. Seeing ads for events and places that were important to us, that were part of our traditions, is so hard. These are things that will bring happier thoughts in the future, I am sure, but right now just cause a wave of grief to wash over me. 

I know you feel I am giving up, quitting. I guess I am. But I feel strong in my belief that I have done all that I can do over many years. It was 2 months into our 20 year marriage that I felt I'd lost my best friend, so I know well the feeling you are describing when you ask how I can expect you to go on after losing yours - I have just had a longer experience with it. I so wish there was another way. I wish, with all my heart, that I could find it within myself to tap into something that would show me a new path, one we haven't yet taken and that might lead to a better place. But I don't see it. And so much damage has been done already to each of us. I cannot express how desperately I tried to find another way, and how deeply I wished for one to appear before me. There is just too much hurt for me to trust that we could start over. We are now in the final third of our lives, and I do not want to live out my days in this emotional climate. And I am deeply sorry.

It is time for the kids to have a different kind of life, and to experience a better role model for good relationships. 

It is time to be happy. It is what I wish for you, and for me. 

With love always,
Your soon-to-be-former wife and long-ago-lost best friend

Songs have never let me down. When I am in a state about something, or there is a burning issue in my life that is needing my attention, I will turn on a radio or put on my iPod, and a song jumps up and says, "LISTEN TO THIS ... " And when this happens, it is almost always an important message that I need to pay attention to. I remember once, years ago, feeling so angry and upset by something my husband had said to me that I left the house just to drive around and regain my composure (I never wanted the kids to see me at that degree of distress). I was so angry that I was hyperventilating and actually finding it impossible to take one big breath. I turned on the ignition, and a song I had never heard before kept singing at me to "breathe, just breathe, breathe, just breathe" - it was Anna Nalick's song, "Breathe, 2 am". If I ever got a tattoo, this would be it ... "breathe". 

I sometimes wonder if Sarah McLachlan has any idea of how much she has touched my life, to the point where I almost feel she is my alter-ego. There are so many of her lyrics that have touched me, or have brought important things from the fog into focus. When I was struggling, trying to figure out why I couldn't do what I absolutely knew had to be done, she helped me. On my way to a therapy appointment (the focus of which was trying to figure out what was stopping me from doing what I knew I had to do) ... I turn on the ignition, and the song "Stupid" comes on the radio, and here is the line that was on ... 

"sleep has left me alone/ to carry the weight of unravelling where we went wrong/ it's all I can do to hang on, to keep me from falling into old familiar shoes.

And now, here I am feeling like everything is being shoved onto my shoulders. I feel like I have done this terrible thing to my soon-to-be-ex  (STBEX), destroying his life even when he was "trying to fix things" (this is in quotations because there was never any real, honest-to-goodness effort). So I am sitting feeling terrible about how I have ruined his life, and although I know the reality of what led us to this point I still feel so responsible for ending things - I really do feel myself carrying the weight of this unravelling. It is such an internal fight for me to rally against the messages I have heard from him for so long - that I am irresponsible, unreliable, lazy, incompetent - and that he had to do and say what he did to balance out my shortcomings. That we are now coming to an end because I am unwilling to work it out, that I don't love him enough to fix things now that he is ready. That I am carelessly throwing away our family and that what I am choosing to do will be so harmful to our kids. That my decision to end our marriage would have killed his parents were they still living, because they loved me like a cherished daughter. That I have actively and systematically turned our children against him, and that that is the reason he is insisting on staying in our family home and forcing us out ("thanks to you, the only way they will want to see their dad is if it is the only way they get to come home"). I sit with the grief of knowing that he has chosen to turn two sets of very dear friends against me, and very likely against our kids. He has told them things that are simply untrue and are so distorted, even for him. I sit with the sadness of all of this, feeling that the weight of it might just crush me, feeling that I am doing something so profoundly hurtful and awful to my family, when along comes Sarah again! Here are the lyrics I just listened to, having heard the song, "Perfect Girl" for the first time ...

Am I faithful, am I strong, am I good enough to belong
in your reverie,
 a perfect girl
Your vision of romance is cruel and all along I played the fool
all your expectations bury me

Chorus:
Don't worry ,
you will find the answer if you let it go
give yourself some time to falter
But don't forgo knowing that you're loved no matter what
and everything will come around in time

I own my insecurities I try to own my destiny
And I can make or break it if I choose
But you take my words and twist them 'round
'til I'm the one who brings you down
Make me feel like I'm the one to blame for all of this...

Chorus

You need everybody with you on your side
Know that I am here for you but I hope in time
You'll find yourself alright alone
You'll find yourself with open arms
You'll find yourself you'll find yourself in time

The riot in my heart decides to keep me open and alive
I have to take myself away from you
'cause I can't compete I can't deny there's nothing that I didn't try
how did I go so wrong in loving you

Wow, Sarah. Again, you have read my life. 

As we pack up things to take with us to our new house, it feels like we are surrounded by pain. I am trying not to stack boxes, because I am aware of how upsetting it is to my husband to see this. I get that in the cycle of grief, I am further along than he is. I experienced my sadness, anger and the bargaining phases long ago and have moved on to acceptance. I try to keep this in mind when he becomes so hateful and vengeful in his words. Not always easy, though.

Tomorrow is garbage day. Tonight, getting things ready to take out before bed, a few things happened that were really quite devastating - not just because of what he did, but of how strategic and deliberate he was in hurting us, and how despicably passive aggressive he is. 

I could see my daughter was upset about something, but she wouldn't say what, just "I'll tell you later". But I saw it for myself. In the doorway to our kitchen, a large and quite full recycling bag sat fully open at the top, as though someone had pulled the plastic to make a perfectly round opening as wide as it would go. Right on top of all the garbage, there were two strategically placed items that had clearly been seen by my daughter (as planned, no doubt). A few years back, my husband went on a business trip to Prague. Along with a tour guidebook for the city, we'd given him a card we made - on the cover a heart framing a photograph of me and the two kids. Inside, it said that we would miss him, and couldn't wait to hear all the stories when he came home.The card and tour guide were strategically placed on top of the garbage so it could be plainly seen. As I tied up that garbage bag, my husband called from the family room, saying he'd forgotten to get the garbage from the ensuite bathroom, and would I please get it. My daughter begged me not to, holding my arm so I couldn't go. I assured her it was okay, that I do that all the time (forget one little pocket of garbage) but she was adamant that I not do it. Finally, she said she knew why he'd asked me, and that there was something in the garbage he wanted me to see but that I shouldn't have to look at. I went down and opened the garbage can and found that she was right. A friend had taken a lovely photograph of my husband and I with the two kids at my 50th birthday brunch, and I had it made into an 8x10. This was crumpled up and thrown on top of the garbage, but opened enough that you could see which photo it was. 

My daughter was beside herself. "He just wants to throw our family away", she cried. I tried to explain that he is hurting terribly with all that is going on, and that he would never have done something like this with the purpose of hurting anyone. She disagreed. She said, rightly, that "I get it that he doesn't like me now that I am a teenager. But I wrote that card when I was a little girl. My printing in that card should be something he wants to keep but he has thrown it away. This is the meanest thing ever. And don't tell me he didn't want us to see it, or for you to see the one of our family in the other garbage. That is what he wanted, to hurt us by throwing us away." She was inconsolable, and would not speak to him for the rest of the night. I expressed my dismay to him that he would have done this, especially to the kids. One thing to put it in our bathroom garbage, but the other one was so clearly to hurt the kids. Of course, he denied it all, saying he hadn't even noticed what he was throwing out, he was just clearing out things that don't have meaning for him anymore. He is mean, and nasty, and this is exactly why I cannot continue to live with him or subject my kids to this kind of mind-messing crap. I never thought I could say this about him, but I can't wait until he is out of my life. 

When I find myself wondering how my husband could possibly have been taken by surprise by this decision to separate, I remind myself that I have been the girl who cried "Wolf".  How many times over how many years did I say these words: "We cannot keep on living like this" or "I cannot/will not be treated this way", but then, in the complete absence of any changes on his part, we DID keep living like that, and I DID allow myself to be treated that way (and in front of our children). Why would he have expected that this time was different? 

There were a few things that made it different this time. He should have known this, but he has such a strong defense mechanism that allows him to quickly absolve himself of all responsibility and to deflect it onto others, in the face of overwhelming evidence that he alone is accountable. In November and December of last year, there were 3 occasions when my amazing 13 year old daughter felt afraid of her dad. His rage had reached such a peak that she was certain he would strike her or knock her down. During one of these incidents, she felt she had to run from the house, which she did, and she sat on the curb at the corner, sobbing, waiting for her friend to come so they could walk to school. Her friend knew something was wrong, but my daughter wouldn't tell her what had happened. The second time, my daughter tried to stand up for herself only to feel afraid, so went to her room with the door closed and refused to come out. On the third occasion, my son was listening from another room and when he felt sure his dad was about to harm his sister he ran in, shouting at him to stop. I was never home when these things happened but heard about them afterwards. My husband's story was always radically different from the one the kids shared with me, and his changed and evolved over time while theirs stayed exactly the same with each retelling. But the most telling thing is my daughter's description of her father's face during these episodes. 


He has a look that he gets so very rarely, only in times of intense anger and rage. I saw it once when I was 8 months pregnant with my son. It was a terribly hot day, and my husband had refused to put in even a window air conditioner. I was exceedingly uncomfortable in the extreme heat and in my very enormous, bloated state. I commented on how hot I felt, and he said in a very provocative tone, "really? I think it's a glorious day", and he maintained his gaze waiting for me to respond. Unfortunately, I did - I said something about how insensitive he was that he could say that to his pregnant wife. He flew off the handle and hissed at me through his teeth, "how dare you say that to ME!" His face was truly frightening. The skin along his jawline did this very weird thing - it shook in waves, like gills in rough water. I'd never seen anything like it. It frightened me enough that I ran from the house and drove around in the car for several hours, afraid to go home. When I did arrive back, he was angry with himself for frightening me, but continued to say that I should not have provoked him because I should have known how much he loves the hot weather. Eight years later was the next time I saw that look, and this time it was directed towards my 71 year old mother. Leaving our children's piano recital, he had been angry with me for chatting with the teacher (having been our much loved teacher for several years, she was moving far away and I wanted to wish her well and thank her for all she'd done for our kids) so when we drove home, he was driving way too fast and taking corners so that the tires squealed. My mom said, "Whoa, be careful" on one particularly bad turn. He shouted back at her, "I can take one of you bitching at me but I won't stand for two of you". My mom was instantly in tears, and my dad, sitting next to my husband in the front seat, clenched his fists in his pockets and bit his tongue. We reached the driveway and my husband stormed out of the van into the house, slamming the door and leaving the rest of us in the van. My mom was afraid to come in, and by this time was crying uncontrollably. We all went in, in the hope of sorting this out so they could leave with things resolved. In the kitchen, my mom sitting in a chair, my husband berated her for speaking to him in that way. When he leaned right in to her, the gills vibrating on his face and pointing his finger at her, I watched my lovely mom close her eyes tight, and hold her arms up around her head, ducking, certain that he would hit her. All this time, my daughter was watching (she would have been about 6) and my son was crying in his room, my dad there to comfort him. After my parents left, I tried to calm the two children down and reassure them that everyone was okay. My son, crying, asked, "are you going to get a divorce?" As much as I could have at that moment, I said no. My husband was on the computer. When I approached him, he started shouting at me, "what do you want me to do? what do you want me to do? kill myself for that? okay I will" and he proceeded to punch himself hard in the stomach. It was bizarre and frightening. He ran out of the house and disappeared for 4 hours. My mom called after 3 to say he had just been at their home to apologize, and that he was better and was on his way home. Then she asked if this had happened before and if we were all safe. I reassured her that we were. 


So when my daughter described this vibrating skin along his jaw, and the purple-red colour of his face, I knew she was completely accurate in what had happened. My husband's incredibly watered down version, which firmly put the blame for the "minor conflict" on my daughter's behaviour, had no credibility at all. I knew then, when my beautiful daughter was afraid of him, that I could not stay married to this man. And I knew I had to find a way to separate from him safely.

Another difference this time around was in something my son said to me, and which I shared with my husband. After a music lesson, my son and I sat in the car and he would not get out. He began to cry, not a common thing for my nearly 17 year old to do. He begged me to make things better. He said, "mom, I probably only have 2 years left at home before going off to university. I want home to be a place I can't wait to come back to, not somewhere I just want to get away from". When I asked him what needed to happen for things to feel better to him, he said without missing a beat - "you have to make dad leave". I shared with my husband that our son had pleaded for things to be better at home (but not telling him our son's idea for a solution), and his comment about wanting it to be a place he longed to return to. He said, "Ridiculous! He would never say that". 

A few weeks later is when I saw the scars on my beautiful son's leg, those marks of sheer desperation, and I had to something and soon. I had to spend the next months taking care of my husband as he imploded, and with a trial separation I knew needed to make one last ditch effort, which we did by going to see a therapist and by having him move back home. But nothing changed. His feeling is that everything changed, that he was transformed by the events of the year leading up to our trial separation. I felt that on the surface, he knew the right words to say, but his actions and words did were in synch at all. He had always been the one in control, and for once, this was not within his grasp. 

How on earth could he have been surprised?                                                                                       

After having dinner with my dear friend the other night, and remarkably discovering that the poet Mary Oliver was someone whose work touched both of us deeply ("The Journey" in particular), he sent me this beautiful line, taken from her poem, The Summer Day ...  

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

And then I found this excerpt from "Starlings in Winter" ...

I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
 
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard.  I want
 
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbably beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
 
~ Mary Oliver ~

Mary is a bit like Sarah, I think ... their words are out there waiting for me to pick them when I am hungry enough and when I am ready to be nourished by them. 
 

This has been a nightmarish few days. First of all, I discovered what was fuelling my husband's aggressive demeanour. A few days ago, when he went out with the real estate guy, turns out he had contact with both of his buddies from his old "men's group". They focused heavily on his "alienated parent" identity, encouraging him to protect himself, to force me (which of course, means the kids, as well) out of the house, and to get his money protected right away. So today, I found myself without any money at all, and no access to any. I opened up my new bank account, but my paycheque doesn't go in for 2 more days. He shut down our household accounts and transferred everything into his own account, including shutting down the visa account (which was under his name, with me as just an extra card holder). If there is a lesson here it is this ... I will never again allow myself to be in this situation, where I am just the "extra" on a partner's accounts. My own visa card has not yet arrived, we have no accessible line of credit, and our family accounts are not longer open for me to use. I had to buy groceries today, and was not able to find a way to pay for them. It was a very uneasy feeling, to say the least. I happened to be driving down our street and saw two friends out for a walk. As we chatted, I suddenly burst into tears when they asked how things were going. I explained the financial situation, and how I will have two days of having no access to any funds. My one friend, who was in tears with me, said she could get me $1000 until my own money was available! So nice of her!! Of course, I declined, but I was blown away by her generosity and her willingness to help. 

My husband also announced that he had spoken with an old friend, who happens to be a lawyer, and got the names of a few good collaborative lawyers in town, as well as one decidedly UNcooperative one. We have one lawyer in town who is notorious; he is the worst kind of bully, he will turn anything and everything into the most heinous conflict and can keep the nasties going for months on end (happily padding his bank account). 
I'd passed on 4 names that my lawyer recommended - people he has a good working relationship with, and so would be able to move through the process quickly because there is a certain trust level there already. My lawyer feels strongly that we are not good candidates for mediation, because we were not both on the same page when to came to the separation and now, with so much anger coming from my husband, it would not work. The idea behind collaborative process is that both individuals have a lawyer present to ensure their rights are not trampled but both lawyers are committed to coming out with an agreement. My lawyer added that he has often seen the process become quite a therapeutic one, as the two parties work out an agreement that is fair and decent, and where the lawyers take on the role of facilitator, avoiding conflict instead of inflaming it.

I did not expect my husband to use one of those lawyers, simply because it was me who passed along the names (even though it would have been better for both of us), but I did ask him (pleaded with him, actually) not to use the one aggressive lawyer, saying it would strip us of every penny we have, that we would lose our home along with any hope of goodwill between us in the future. I was so hurt to hear that our old friend had given my husband this man's name in the list of lawyers he recommended, because he would know the damage he would inflict on me personally (he would rip me to shreds in the process of negotiating a "fair" settlement, no doubt forcing me to give up on any of what is owed to me). Of course, my husband met with this bulldog of a lawyer first - he wouldn't give me the name, and wanted me to believe he didn't know who he was meeting with. That he was just walking into a law firm with 12 lawyers and 15 associates, and saying to the receptionist that he had a 1:00 with "John's" friend. It was when he came back that he announced who he'd met with, and that he didn't seem like such a bad guy at all. Such a good guy, in fact, that he might even go with him. I burst into tears and pleaded with him to use someone who would help us through the process more humanely, for everyone's sake. He just flashed an evil smile at me and walked away. It totally confirmed that I'd had good reason to be afraid of his anger. 

I have just returned from dinner with a dear friend, one who is going through similar circumstances (although his separation occurred months ago). It was wonderful to sit with someone I could feel so safe with - we have been friends for many years, and I have always considered him the most kind and decent man I know - and tell the story of what happened in my marriage. He shared some of the details of his story, as well, and we both marvelled at how we were both so shocked to hear of each other's marriages ending (that we knew each other so well, yet knew nothing of the troubles we'd had). Our dinner lasted hours, and as we said goodbye at the end of the evening, I felt a pang of optimism. I knew that my husband was the anomaly, and that most men were good, and kind, and loving like my friend. 

During dinner, we had a remarkable discovery. Our lives have taken parallel paths in so many ways, and here we are again going through something similar. But we discovered something else. I had just re-read one of my very favourite poems, and was reminded of how this beautiful piece of work has hovered around my life until the moment I needed it. When I was a young intern back in 1984, someone passed this newly published poem to me - "The Journey", by Mary Oliver. I loved it. It spoke to so many of the clients I was seeing in my brand-new practice and field of work, and I shared it with many clients and colleagues alike. It did not apply to my own life at all, yet it resonated with me so deeply that I could not ignore it nor could I fail to see how it somehow connected to something within me. It has resurfaced over the years many times. When I mentioned it to him, it turned out to be one of his favourite poems, as well. He has always been very dear to me, so there was something kind of special in finding that "my" Journey was also his. Here is that beautiful poem, from Mary Oliver's collection of poetry entitled, "Dream Work" ...

The Journey 

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save. 
 
~ Mary Oliver ~
 
On and off over the years, this poem has resurfaced for a whole new reading. Each time, it touched me and each time, I shared it with others who were going through something that made the words seem so right. Still, it did not resonate specifically with me, as I continued to stumble through the fog and miss the fact entirely that I was not doing what I had to do, that I was not letting go of those voices. 

When my husband turned 50, we were in the midst of our "trial separation". I will always feel terrible that we were not available to him for his birthday, no matter that I was in the classic space between a rock and a hard place. He hadn't seen the kids for several weeks, and they did not want to see him at all. He was very emotional about having missed their first day of school (for our daughter, her first day of high school). Things between the two of us were not good; it had come to my attention that he had said some very negative things about me and the kids to our very dear friends, and that as a result they would not see me ("they'll be happy to see us when we visit them as a family of 4"). The clear loss of that friendship, especially given the unfair circumstances, was enormously painful to me. I could have insisted that the kids come and we all go out for dinner. He would have had the highly charged experience of seeing them for the first time in quite awhile, other than one therapy session he had with each of them (in which they held him firmly to account for his very significant role in our family situation as well as in the destruction of their relationships). In addition, he would have been very distraught at seeing their ambivalence (at best) or anger at having to be there. But on the other hand, for him to spend his 50th birthday alone, or with a few friends and his own family when he would be so missing his children, just seemed impossibly sad. 

The only thing he asked for his birthday was to spend the day in our home by himself with the dog. I left him a big box of his favourite cookies, baked that morning, along with a book of poetry - "Ten Poems To Change Your Life". In the store, I'd flipped through them from back to front, never reaching the very first one but impressed by the others in the book and knew it was the one I wanted to give him. It was not until months later, when I struggled with my decision and explored all the reasons that I could not do what I knew I needed to do, that I picked up that book again and read it from the very beginning. The very first poem in the book? "The Journey" - I had no idea it was in there, let alone the opening poem in a collection selected "to change your life". Here I'd thought the messages in the book were for him; turns out, they were equally important for me. Reading that poem again, at that time, made me realize why it had hung around the edges of my life for so long. 

It was waiting for that very day.