You're so very fortunate to be getting Greek's perspective - as I think her words offer a fine reminder that, as much as we might think we understand our WAS's words, there can often be much more going on...
Your W did share a lot of honesty in her note - and a lot of confusion - and I think it is enough for you to read the note and then let it go...not to belabor the water vehicle metaphor - but sometimes these notes - these brief glimpses that people offer us into themselves are merely like the canoes used to cross a river - once crossed, leave the canoe there - and don't try to portage that boat over a mountain like Herzog's Aguirre. That's the latent Buddhist in me talking...
But there's also the practical truth to the limits of words - in that we can use them best to convey simple things - like past the salt - but they fail to capture the complexity of all that we try to squeeze into them. Even the best of novels can only tell part of their story - and so the most honest of notes, or the most emotional of attempts at honesty, will only and always be limited just by virtue of having been written...
In other words...the notes are useful to an extent...but they don't offer enough to make sense of the writers (or the readers) nearly as much as their actions do. Not to say that words don't have their value - I would be broke...well...more broke...if that were true...but they seem to have the most value when dealing with logistics, with stuff that's not governed by our hearts...since our hearts and our emotions just seem to be at constant war with reason...
At least that's where my thoughts are taking me right now...thinking about your W's pain - her own confusion - my main impulse it so feel sadness for her - sadness that she could feel so incomplete in herself that she could not even feel worthy of a love that sounds so important to her...But, and this comes to mind just as quickly, perhaps that is how she must feel in order for her to travel the journey she must travel...for her to navigate that river...
I am also the child of divorce - and have already been divorced once before...my parent's divorce was hell on my brother and my sister (both older) - but that's not just because of the divorce - I would say that it had much more to do with my parents - and how they were after the divorce - with the degree to which they both took out the frustrations of their guilt (my father) and their unfulfilled lives (my mother) on us...punishing us with their misdirected anger - and, in the case of my father, finding too much refuge in an addiction to work...and a specious requiem in Chivas.
My son is now 12 - his mother and I divorced shortly after he was born...and most people who meet him think he is the most stable, self-confident child they've ever met...the difference, I think, is that his mother and I both did our best for him - and did not take our issues, our shortcomings, etc, out on him...From my experience - and (albeit limited) empirical observations, the troubled children of divorce tend to have troubled parents...so...we can achieve a great deal in terms of protecting our children from the hell of divorce by modeling a strong, healthy, honorable way of living – become a person that sees even this pain, this mortifying experience, as an opportunity for growth...
Whoa...I went on a bit longer than I meant to...hope you don't mind...next time I'll cut and paste to my own thread so as not to hijack...
