Ah, it's a nice blue day in Coastal State, and I'm feeling mojolicious.
Gonna get some work done. Have a conference call to look forward to. Was finally able to get out of bed at a decent hour. And I've decided to be everything WAW isn't -- forthright, open, honest, clear, decisive. I'm going to model -- for myself and my friends -- the attitude and behavior that I think someone in my position should manifest. Enough with the pettiness and the nastiness and the regret and -- most of all -- enough with the self-recrimination.
For 5 months I've taken responsibility. I've taken ownership. I've owned-up, 'fessed-up, broke-up.
Today I start a new phase. I'm not apologizing any more for the past. I'm not living in the shadow of the past. I'm not thinking about the past. Every time you focus on the past, you just drag it into the present and it affects the future -- which means, curiously enough, that it's not really the "past," is it?
A friend asked me after a brutal 2-hour tennis game last night, what am I willing to do for reconciliation?
And I thought about it, looking out over the ocean, and I realized -- with a clarity that you don't often get -- what the answer is.
"Nothing," I said. "Not one dam thing."
Scratching the old noggin, Friend asked, "So what does that mean?"
To which I replied: "It means that [WAW] was right all along -- that marriage is dead. It's done. I don't want it back. I don't want that wife back. Now, I'm open to a new marriage with a new wife who just happens to be the same person as the old wife. But there would have to be new rules, new agreements, new evaluations, new expectations, new understandings. The king is dead; long live the king."
Friend replied, "That's an interesting way to look at it. So you really don't want her back?"
And I heard myself say something that, upon reflection, I thought was pretty nifty: "Nope. But I could want her forward."
