Episode 3 - The Divorce Awakens

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I talked to a friend over the weekend and he talked about when he split with his wife. He said the time when he split from his wife was some of the best times of his life. He dated a lot of women and just generally tried to focus on taking care of his kids, working on his business, and making himself happy. He said he talked to his dad about it and his dad told him - life’s too short. Go out and enjoy it, date other women, have fun, work on your career. My own father is dead - but now that I think about it - I think my dad would tell me exactly the same thing. That makes me feel better. Also he would say this about all of the fair weather friends and neighbors who seem to have taken my wife’s side without knowing the full story and my perspective on everything that happened - fvck them. All that matters is what you know to be true, so hold your head up and be sure of yourself.

Great time at Lollapalooza Friday night btw. Went with - brothers, cousins, sis in law, cousins wife, two other friends. Everyone drank (some also smoked) and enjoyed themselves like they were in their early 20s again. We saw Foals, M83 and Radiohead. The Radiohead concert was great - they played cool songs off all of their albums, although they have so many good songs it was really impossible for them to play all their good songs. We were really up close to the stage, but I think we might have been in a bad place in terms of the sound system, the mixing was really crappy. Otherwise, Lollapalooza was an epic party experience. It felt great to be out among young people, having fun and celebrating life. Later on, the party got kind of crazy - somehow I wound up at a strip club with my brother and two other buddies of ours (this was not my idea). I think they felt sorry for me, they kept buying me lap dances with this one Russian girl who everyone agreed was a dead ringer for Mila Kunis. What can I say, I had a lot to drink. In general I don’t go to strip clubs as I think they are degrading to women.

On Saturday, my buddy J. came downtown and we spent the day, as we usually do, walking around the city, stopping every now and then to have a drink at some random bar. We usually play this game where we try to talk to attractive women and/or strike up conversations with fun looking groups of people on the street. It was another great time. All in all I had a really fun weekend. I realize now as I’m writing this that I was having so much fun that I didn’t spend all that much time obsessing over and feeling miserable about my divorce situation, although I did have a few conversations about it with my friend T, my friend J, and my brother which helped me a lot to feel at least a little better about everything. Mostly, I was having too much fun to think of my miserable divorce situation.

I came home Saturday night, worn out from all the drinking and walking outside in the hot summer night, and fell asleep for 11 hours. I woke up and went to my mom’s house today. My brothers came over, my one brother brought his wife and baby girls - and we had a barbecue and talked. Afterwards, I attended a 12 step meeting over the phone.

I posted my Lollapalooza pics on Facebook - it’s interesting - it’s really obvious from the ‘likes’ who’s still ‘on my side’ at this point.

I just want to be happy again, most of the time. Right now I have to push away thoughts of regret, despair, and guilt over my divorce all of the time. I think I have fewer of these types of thoughts these days, which is good. The bottom line is - if my wife doesn’t want to work things out with me, then I have no choice but to move forward on my own. At this point I’m in limited contact with her, we mostly speak about legal matters and the kids. I don’t plan to ask her to go to marriage counseling, have a heart to heart about our relationship, tell her that I’m 90 days sober and ‘working on myself’. I can’t do those things anymore, I feel like they only causes me more pain and push her farther away. The flip side, though, is she is becoming more of a stranger to me, and our life together and everything we shared, more of a distant memory every passing day.