My sister dug this up in her SW textbook:
I have lived through the death of one mother, the divorce of another, and the shoddy installment of a third. I am still picking up the fragments from all three episodes. They all continue to be burdensome, though they were outside my control. My most vivid memories are those of deep depression and calamitous anxiety, for my father and siblings. The highlights of my life are periods of intense discomfort, with some connecting line of mundane existence. I found ease in Alaska's long, dark winter nights and in its mysterious way of muting the reality of the world; anonymity is safe and detachment is best.
Death is forced evisceration, and divorce is a self-amputation without anesthetics. Second, third marriages are shoddy, forced, unnatural, emotionally-draining, unedifying, and full of hate in one form or another - that is - until the new person(s) become integrated into this new body, if they do at all.
Worst of all, it is the children who pick up the fragments. In every divorce, the sins of the parents spin and unravel over the children, the children who are always, constantly, dwelling in the past and in the future, but never at ease with the present. There are too many opportunities for disappointment in the present, new anxieties at every nook, every show, or in every new acquaintance. There is relief always in the future, in the unknown, somewhere and sometime better, a place and time that is always better than the here and now.
If you're going to get married, you better know what you're doing, or you're going to be making a lot of people's lives miserable for a very long time. Bear that responsibility dutifully even if you can't do it joyfully, that is, up to a certain point.
If there is a single predetermining factor in divorce, it is probably that individuals marry before the have firmly established a sense of independent selfhood. The more decisive question is whether at the time of marriage both individuals have passed through a certain psychological space in which they grappled with life alone, depended only on their own resources, and discovered that they could win the battle against their own fears.
I have lived through the death of one mother, the divorce of another, and the shoddy installment of a third. I am still picking up the fragments from all three episodes. They all continue to be burdensome, though they were outside my control. My most vivid memories are those of deep depression and calamitous anxiety, for my father and siblings. The highlights of my life are periods of intense discomfort, with some connecting line of mundane existence. I found ease in Alaska's long, dark winter nights and in its mysterious way of muting the reality of the world; anonymity is safe and detachment is best.
Death is forced evisceration, and divorce is a self-amputation without anesthetics. Second, third marriages are shoddy, forced, unnatural, emotionally-draining, unedifying, and full of hate in one form or another - that is - until the new person(s) become integrated into this new body, if they do at all.
Worst of all, it is the children who pick up the fragments. In every divorce, the sins of the parents spin and unravel over the children, the children who are always, constantly, dwelling in the past and in the future, but never at ease with the present. There are too many opportunities for disappointment in the present, new anxieties at every nook, every show, or in every new acquaintance. There is relief always in the future, in the unknown, somewhere and sometime better, a place and time that is always better than the here and now.
If you're going to get married, you better know what you're doing, or you're going to be making a lot of people's lives miserable for a very long time. Bear that responsibility dutifully even if you can't do it joyfully, that is, up to a certain point.
1 comment:
I enjoy reading all your posts, Jae -- even the super depressing ones.
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