My divorce broke me.

Even before the divorce and separation, I was changing. I missed my kids being little and I got sentimental over the tiniest things. Moreover, I was growing increasingly emotional and empathetic. While I was gripped by grief and anxiety at the potential end of my marriage, I was also far more open than I ever had been before. I felt people’s pain, I reveled in a new tenderness. I loved hard. I hurt deeply. I was changing while also clinging to the past. While my ex-wife longed for a new life to find her authentic self, I longed to circle back to our roots: home, hearth, family. It was not to be. Further change was inevitable and we divorced in April 2024.

Sometimes, I chide myself for looking back so much. Shouldn’t I focus on the present and look to the future? Even before the signs of my marriage ending, I was finding myself drawn to the old, the lost, the retro. My office became adorned in vintage computers and video game maps, old D&D books and knick knacks from my childhood. It was like a cocoon of familiarity. I spent a lot of time there during COVID. Meanwhile, my marriage burned.

I still have this longing for the past in many ways. Last night, my girlfriend and I rewatched “E.T.: The Extra-terrestial.” The simple charm and innocence of this movie was refreshing and we tracked down it’s sequel in my garage: an 89 page children’s book called “E.T. The Book of the Green Planet.” Like the movie, its quirky and innocent. There’s a tenderness between E.T. and the plants he takes care of and his Parent (apparently his species is actually sexless) who comforts him.

Rewatching that movie and rereading this little book remind me of how I became who I was. There are things from my childhood that shaped the adult so much, and this little story is one of those. The respect for life, the love of family, gentleness.

There’s a lot of media like this that affected me so. Star Trek: TNG has made me want to constantly better myself. I don’t think it’s accident that I’m learning guitar later in life after being hooked on a show where the entire crew performs theater and symphony during their free time away from exploring the galaxy. A Choose Your Own Adventure book made me realize that one possible path to happiness was by lifeline learning. In it, the protagonist gains access to a super-intelligent computer and at first asks it to make him rich. Instead, the computer asks him if what he’s really looking for is to be happy. The kid agrees and is surpised to find that he’s most happy when he’s learning new things. These days, I find I’m bored and restless if I’m not picking up a new skill like archery or python programming.

When I was about ten years old my mom grounded me for some reason. I couldn’t watch TV for a month. Like a lot of kids back then, Saturday morning cartoons was a weekly obsession but now it was off limits. I remember trying to figure out what I would do with my day off from school. In the end, I started drawing. I was never much of an artist, but to my 10 year old self, none of that mattered. I drew my own cartoons, stars and planets and spaceships, new world, zany characters. I was enraptured in my creations. Then one day, my 10 year old brain had a sudden realization: I was happier doodling than I was watching Saturday Morning Cartoons The act of creation, no matter how amateur or trite, was far more compelling than hours of packaged entertainment. I remember thinking that I wanted to keep drawing after my sentence was complete, but it never happened. When I was done being grounded, I returned to the glow of easy recreation. But the lesson stood out to me. Creation is precious.

So much has changed. I am trying to purge the house I raised a family in from at least some of my vintage collection. The kids grown and here only about half the time. The wife of 24 years is gone. I’m neither the father nor husband I once was. I’m in many ways more adventurous, more social. I shoot arrows and boulder, ride my bike at night and date younger women. I feel so much more compelled to help others than I did 20 years ago. And strangely I feel like I need other people in my life so much more than I ever did in the past.

In other ways, I’m returning to my 10 year old self. Watching 80’s movies, reading a touching children’s book, playing D&D with my kids. I need to create things and learn things, even if they are only for me. I’ll likely never play my guitar in a band, nor make a best selling video game, but I still engage in these things.

The child is still there–the day-dreamer, the creative, the introvert, the innocent who wants everyone to be ok. The strange new adult is too–adventurous, social, responsible, empathetic and athletic.

It’s like I paused for 20 years on who I really was to raise a family. Now that that job is done, or almost done, I am returning to who I once was when I was young. While at the same time, someone entirely new is emerging from the ashes. I still don’t know where I’ll end up.

Everything has changed. Everything is the same.

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash