Hunters in the Snow

Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1565

It's been four years, give or take a few days, since my life (as I then knew it) shattered. Most of us grow up believing our lives will go a specific way. And mine did, for quite some time. But one day it just seemed like the printer that was feeding me my script ran dry, pushing out blank pages instead.

A lot of people think divorce is this long, drawn out affair. Maybe that's because most of them are the result of actual affairs that left two bitter souls in it's wake. Mine wasn't. Instead, it was a blur. Turns out that you can go from seemingly happily married to single in less than 8 weeks, even less if you satisfy the filing state's minimum duration of residency.

I've avoided writing about this before because I wasn't quite sure how to approach it. Even now, I am jittery as I peck at my keyboard, seeing what may come of this. I'm not even writing about that, the part between my soul and another's. I wouldn't even know what to say about that, because that was an emotional eternity ago. I write this, today, in part because I am unable to inhabit the mindset I must've had four years ago.

And that is a blessing. It means that I've transcended the anguish and decided it was best left in that moment. And that's why, tonight, I am writing of optimism, of the hope that better days lie ahead.

It's really something, to shatter. To be a whole man with a personality and a plan and then find yourself sweeping up the pieces. You pull them from the pile you spent months sweeping, and lay it on the table. Where did this one go? Actually, where did it come from? I don't remember that modification. Was it from that one time a crush rejected me on the playground? Who knows.

That's a lie, though. It turns out I'm quite good at introspection, at finding the skeletons in my closet. I went to a few therapy sessions before that I made that realization. I'd showed up prepared for the hour as if I was taking an entrance exam. There wasn't a question asked of me that I hadn't already asked of myself. I guess you could say I tested out of that program and got invited to the Gifted and Talented program at the Academy for Spiritual Regulation.

Around this time I started speed-running a lot of cringe-y new age stuff. I'll say that neo-buddism is extraordinary as a coping mechanism. If the mechanisms work for prisoners of war, they'll suffice for a civilian with a good job and a nice family and a roof over his head. I'd say I went through the motions for a while with that stuff, probably longer than I should have.

I couldn't quite put my finger on it at the time, but in retrospect there is a certain softness in that line of thinking that doesn't suit my temperament. Calming yourself down is fine when you need to self-soothe, but you can't do that forever. Anxiety is a signal that something is wrong, and you need to figure out what that thing is so you can fight it.

Turns out, for me, that something was passivity. I'm really, really glad I figured that out. Neo-buddism reeks of passive behavior, and if I'd stuck with a practice in that vein I'd surely still be in purgatory. Along with that, I was pretty close-minded, blocking out the inconveniences of my life, very much in a meditative sense.

When the pandemic shut down the world, I was about a year into this. Right around that time, I felt like I had Grown a lot and was starting to get my footing. Maybe I had, and circumstance pushed me back down. But 2020 was year two of purgatory, and in some ways much worse than the first. The lows were lower (briefly flirted with alcoholism), but the highs came back. Despite the weird social situation, I was making friends with my neighbors and starting to feel at home in a city which I had no connections (god how did I forget the hundred-of-miles-from-family part of the story?!).

In hindsight, I'm not quite sure where I would gone had it not been for the Sickness. It afforded me time to retreat, to figure out who I was and what I hoped to be. When you can't feel pressure to go out and have the social life of a twenty-something, you end up having plenty of time to get into ultramarathoning and building yourself a shitty farmhouse dining table and read obscure blogs that are gateways to other intellectual universes.

Those are mere activities, but each of them has trafficked in a new mindset. What's interesting to me is that these weren't new mindsets at all. They all existed deep within me, and ones I lived for much of my youth. Ones that celebrated gritty work and vibrant play and the joy of endless possibility. The world slowly relieves us of all these things...it's our job to recover them.

I often joke now that 20 year old Bryan would be mortified if you'd showed him what his life would be like at (almost) 30. But at 10, I'd have thought I was living the dream right now. You mean I get to live in an old house (like the kind you see on TV) and you have the sweetest dog (who could run for mayor) and you have a Very Loud guitar amplifier that you can play whenever you want?!? SIGN ME UP.

I have my theories for how and why we lose our spirit as we grow old. But I know that it can be recovered by embracing play and doing hard work and stomaching uncertainty and re-realizing the joy of infinite potential. Much of my first 17 essays here have orbited those bodies, and many more will too.

And in finding spirit again, I seemed to have wiped that grief from my memory. It's remnants are still there, like the ghosted equations previously erased from the blackboard, no doubt. But if you keep scribbling and erasing and scribbling some more, you eventually write over the past with new memories.

I guess that's an apt metaphor, since for all intents and purposes, this is my dissertation on a four-year post-trauma program. Much pacing was done, back and forth and back and forth, as I theorized my way out in chalk, only to realize that the real answer to my equation was to step back, turn around, and simply lvie.

I have resisted writing something like this for a long time. I often roll my eyes at these kinds of diary entries. But maybe my disdain is a signal that there's something to be found in this noise. I don't plan to make a habit of this, that's for sure. Going forward, I'd much rather survey all of human experience and write some fiction which may have a sliver of myself within. Thanks for bearing with me. –Bryan