Recently, I wrote a post explaining that I’d need a bit of a break from the frantic pace of writing that has come to characterize my routine here. The main reason, of course, was that I had to finally face the day of reckoning regarding my divorce, which is that I might actually lose my kids. This is something I’ve feared from the beginning, because the man my ex ran off with told me quite explicitly that he intended to have her and my kids leave the country with him. It didn’t work out exactly as he’d planned, but it still might go that way. Such is the lot of the divorced father today.
However, there was something else. It’s been exactly a year since my father died, and that brought back a number of the same unpleasant feelings that accompanied the original event. It didn’t help at all that in obtaining my daughter’s birth certificate a couple weeks ago I had to go back to the medical examiner’s office, i.e. the morgue, and see the same guy who sat me down last year and went over the death reports, then handed me the personal effects. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, and combined with a fairly extended period of not seeing my children left me in a darkly reflective mood that was not conducive to productivity.
I’ve made some statements to the effect that we ought to be a bit more honest about our own lives, and what drives us personally. I’m afraid we American men aren’t very good at that. I’m not sure whether it’s cultural, or whether it’s a universal male trait, but it’s a fact. It’s also understandable. Men don’t generally like to deal with such unpleasantness and the uncomfortable emotions that surround these personal issues. Women’s fascination with the ugly details of interpersonal relationships and the intensely private emotions that accompany them has often struck me as somewhat morbid and indecent.
However, we have to give them credit for having stronger stomachs in that regard. It definitely has its utility. For example, could we survive a gut shot if it weren’t for some guy willing to roll up his sleeves, reach into those bloody entrails and sew up the damaged organs?
Perhaps, if we are to move on, we have to learn to get over our squeamishness and face the ugly truths in our own lives. That seems almost like heresy in this snake-oil era of personal improvement and boundless optimism, but how can we ever know what the real problems are if we are too afraid to look at them? In a sense, we have been facing them here at The Spearhead from the beginning. We have been exposing the ugly side of feminism for all to see, and it’s working. But we’ve left something out: our own stories.
I’ve decided it’s time to make a couple changes in that regard. Nothing too drastic, but one reaches a certain age and there comes a time when reflection is finally appropriate. For me, at least, that time has come. And I doubt I’m alone in that regard.
So I’d like to encourage people who have reached that time in their life as well to share their own stories, draw their own conclusions, and leave a little wisdom for the rest of us. I’m just getting started on it myself.
