It’s late June 2016 and I’m using a shaking hand to close the heavy door to my house. 

Outside, in the stillness of the summer night, I hear the door close on my wife’s car. She drives away, heading to her parents for the night, and with it goes the last pieces of our relationship.  

My palm rests on the wood, feeling its coolness underneath.  

“So that’s what it’s like to close the door on 12 years of marriage,” I think. “And now I’m part of that club. Wonder if I get a jacket or something?”   

In a short amount of time, the person I’ve been married to for over a decade was going to go from being my “wife” to being my “ex-wife”. Things — a lot of things — are about to change forever. 

Thinking back on it now from my comfortable, more adjusted perch in the future, it seems like another lifetime and life entirely because it was both of those things. 

Armed with the power of hindsight and six solid years of good old fashioned healing, I can say that the journey was, from beginning to end, worthwhile. The divorce was the best thing for everyone involved. Look at us now, all mended up and figured out. 

I’ve learned a lot and have come a long way as a person. Sitting in my chair, writing on the moment six years later, empowered by experience and reflection, I’m happy where I am. I understand. 

But back then, I wasn’t so understanding. I wasn’t even the same person. I was a kinda-person, half of a guy, who was sleeping through life. Then I was gifted a remarkably loud wakeup call. Without going into the details, it’s safe to say that I was “given” my divorce. I didn’t have a say in the matter — it was a decision made for me. I was only made aware of it and quite suddenly. 

Divorce is undoubtedly one of the most difficult challenges anyone will ever face but it’s made somehow worse when it’s a situation that’s given to you. 

Life-changing decisions are tough but they’re a measure tougher when you’re put in a place where you’re caught off guard and the choice isn’t yours. It’s made for you. 

Being on the receiving end of a divorce is like being  stripped naked in a crowd full of people on a bright sunny summer day. One minute, you’re walking around like normal and the next, surprise, your clothes are gone and you’re shocked, ashamed, vulnerable, and confused as to how it happened. 

But there’s a huge opportunity in being backed into a corner and forced to act. It allows you the chance to see paths forward more clearly, even if your current situation is foggy and unclear. You may be immersed in a fog and unsure of how you got there, but the road ahead can have two clear directions — positive and negative.  

I still think the most important thing I did in my divorce was the very first thing I did. I chose to take the most negative thing I’d experienced to that point and start it off as positively as possible. 

Now, I won’t get into the details of what led to my marriage ending for a couple of reasons. 

First, the rate of marriages ending in divorce in the United States is between 40 and 50 percent. It’s a little more common than probably anyone would like it to be. If you want to read a story with details, ask a friend or might I suggest Reddit. It’s common.

Second, the details don’t really matter. There’s nothing to be learned from pointing fingers at all — in any situation really — so there’s no worth in assigning blame. Nobody wins when you build a massive sign pointing to a problem that says “Problem”. Nobody remembers the person that screamed “Fire!”, it’s the fire fighters — the problem solvers– who are the heroes. As an aside, one of the best things I learned from my ordeal was to be the problem solver as opposed to the person who assigns blame. 

Finally, laying out the details would be an exercise in anger and that’s another man’s game at this point. I say with no small measure of confidence that being angry about that situation is a problem for another version of myself from a different life. 

I’ve left that guy behind. 

But for the purpose of exposition, it’s worth noting that I was given the situation. It was completely unexpected and I was confronted with news much earlier than it was expected to be given to me.  

And on that night in June 2016, when the news was delivered and my new reality was realized, two adults walked away from each other without a fight. I stayed in the house where my kid slept in his room. There was no big blowup, no screaming match, and no violent outbreaks. People needed some space and that space was created while everyone was safe and cared for without any modicum of drama.

I’ve told this story a million times, though, admittedly, never this carefully, and have come to have people say that this ending is some sort of accomplishment. 

“I don’t know what I would do but it wouldn’t be calm,” one guy told me once when I replayed my story. “Not even fucking close.”

I kind of get that. When I empathize with guys I can see how they’d want to react to the situation with action. That’s not me though. I had some of those feelings within me but not enough to act on them. 

I don’t see any big win in that. I’ve never been a fan of speaking with my hands and anyway, my kid had been in bed for nearly an hour by that point. Ripping the house apart to put on a show of my anger would’ve been a display fit for a gorilla at the zoo — not an adult male in Ellwood City. I would’ve ended up having to explain to my kid what was happening, why daddy was destroying the house, and it would’ve been a compounded, ugly mess. 

In the end, she grabbed some stuff and left. I shut the door, listened to her car make its way up the drive, worn tires crunching rocks under its weight, and that was that for the evening.  

I Went Looking For Answers

In the two hours that followed, I ran through my rolodex of best friends, having phone conversations in hushed, angry tones about how my life was falling apart around me. My words came out like ice pellets in a hail storm, tiny balls of anger and frustration spewing forth at a rapid pace from my mouth and landing harsh and indignant on the metal roof of the conversation. 

Phone call after phone call and conversation after conversation gave some form to my feelings, transforming them into a painful, swollen childlike entity searching for an answer as to why it happened as well as how I could make it all go away. 

My mind was a tempest of emotion, a ship caught on a violent sea tossing about in disbelief, hurt, anger, and disgust. I had a hard time understanding what was happening and admitting that it was happening to me. 

It’s a situation that was both confusing and unwanted. I didn’t know how I got there but I knew I wanted it to not be anymore. I wanted to restart this level and respawn earlier in my life to when this wasn’t happening. 

I stood in my unfinished basement, both arms stretched before me with hands upturned, holding nothing at all and asking one simple question. I was on the phone with my late buddy Adam when I looked into my empty hands before me. 

“What the fuck is happening and how do I make it unhappen?” I asked Adam that night.

He knew — the answer was simple — but he was good enough of a friend to keep his mouth shut. Nothing was going to come of him saying, “Buddy, your marriage is ending.”  

I’d come to know it as well — I’d come to know a lot more — but that would take time. 

That night, as I searched for answers on the phone with bluetooth earphones wedged in my ears, I adopting that weird, “how-in-the-hell-is-this-happening” pose that is now burned into my brain. If I close my eyes, I can see myself standing there with both of my arms stretched out before me and palms up, holding nothing and asking questions. 

“Why? How? What’s happening?” I would say, my empty arms and presented before me. 

I understand now that there’s a big significance to that. My mind may have been searching for answers, trying to find out what was happening to me but my body was trying to tell me something. 

While I stood there asking questions in frustration, my arms lifted and held an invisible form in front of me at eye level. I asked questions and my upturned palms raised in front of me. It’s almost as if my arms were saying, “here dummy, look, I’ve got this to show you.”

But I wasn’t listening, at least not yet. Understanding would come later. 

Because here’s the thing about this situation. The problem isn’t that you don’t know what’s going on — it’s that you haven’t been paying attention. If you’re confused, it’s because you’ve been actively ignoring what has been happening. You weren’t doing the things that needed to be done to not be in that situation. 

You’re a child, asleep on a road trip, and awakened suddenly at the destination unclear of where you are and uncertain of how you got there. That’s not being an active participant in your marriage. 

Marriage is a two-person partnership and it takes a lot of work. It’s time and effort is matched only by raising children. I’ve been actively engaged in both ventures for the past 20 or so years so I’ve got experience. 

Here’s the truth about the matter though — if you find yourself in the situation and can’t figure out how you got there, that’s a clear indication of a source problem in and of itself. If something happens to you and you’re 

shocked, it’s because you weren’t paying attention to the details that led to the situation. If life explodes like a time bomb, then you weren’t listening for the count down. 

I’ve talked to dozens of guys who are on the receiving end of a marriage-ending situation and most of them express confusion about how they got there. 

They can’t believe what’s happening and stand dumbfounded at the situation they are in. 

Ignoring the potential signs of disaster is a decision. Owning up to your rule in a marriage that ends swiftly and violently is a feat in and of itself. 

If you wake up suddenly to find yourself deep within the woods at 3AM with only the moonlight to light your way, you’re going to be disoriented. You’re going to be scared, confused, and lost. But this doesn’t just happen, at least in the real world. 

Nobody finds themselves deep within the forest without putting themselves there. It takes as many steps to get into the forest as it takes to get yourself out. 

So back then, I was standing there with my arms outstretched in front of me with palms raised, searching for answers. Now I realize I wasn’t standing there empty handed at all. 

In my right hand, I held the reasons. 

I held the years of not doing the right things. I held the times I could’ve been a better partner — even person — and all the stupid decisions I’d made. I held the indifference and selfishness with which I carried out my life up until that point. Sure, I did some things right but I also did enough things poorly to be equally culpable in the outcome. 

In my other hand, on my left, I held the person I had been up to that point. 

I held all the emotions and thoughts and beliefs and faults. I had the makeup of myself in that hand, the can of fuel to drive the person I was to cause all the stuff that was in my other hand. 

In my two hands I held the sum total of the being I was and the things that got me there, even if I didn’t know it then. 

I didn’t know that then, but it soon became clear to me.

What I did know then was that it was time to make a decision. 

What I Didn’t Do

After I exhausted my resource of friends, my arm fell heavy to my side, clutching the phone tightly in my hand, and I stared blankly into a white wall. The house fell silent around me. I noticed how quiet the house was in the night as a need started to grow within me. 

Man, I could use a drink, I thought to myself. Two fingers of Maker’s Mark in a short glass. In my mind, I saw the oversized ice ball drifting toward the side of the heavy whiskey glass in slow motion, sloshing brown liquid toward the wall of the heavy glass and coming to a stop with a clange against the side. The idea was a match strike flame and angry orange glow in my mind. 

My mother lived not too far from me and I could easily call in a favor and get her to take my kid. Sure, it was late at night but it wasn’t too late so I could convince her that given the circumstances, I needed some time to myself. 

“Take my kid for the night, I’ve got a divorce barreling toward me like a train in a narrow tunnel and I need to drown out the noise of the locomotive’s wail with whiskey,” I could hear myself saying. 

In that moment, I wanted to dull my senses enough to be able to deal with the moment and let my rage surface, explode, and be realized. I wanted to drink and be angry at the situation I’d be given and the life of mine that had suddenly become something quite different than I imagined. 

I wanted to grab onto something solid and firm so I could shake it violently, look into its features, study its design, and then smash it onto the ground and learn what it was made of. 

Here’s the thing though — none of that would have made the situation any better. No amount of alcohol numbing my senses would have fixed the situation — it would just leave me with a remarkable hangover to explain in the morning. 

Raging in anger and using my hands to tear apart my belongings in an attempt to work through my hurt and anguish wouldn’t have adjusted my current situation. It would just leave me with broken reminders of a life that was now strangely odd to me. 

What you learn about horrible and difficult life situations like divorce, death and loss is that they are opportunities wrapped in dark cloaks of fear and anguish. It’s a chance for us to stare life in the face, see if for what it really is, and then make a decision. We can either run toward it confidently into a new chapter in our progress or shy away to hide who we are stuck being. And then based on that decision, when the sun comes up the next day, that’s who you are now. 

In our worst times, we are defined by the way we handle ourselves. The choices we make end up making us and that’s who we are transformed into.

When our lives become their most challenging, we show our true natures with our response. And it doesn’t always have to be the way we are at the moment, it could also be the way we want to be. 

I wasn’t a strong man that night when the four walls of my life fell away — I was a busted, confused mess of a person. 

But I wanted to be. 

I had a choice to either deal with the situation in front of me positively or negatively. Regardless of the confusion I had with the source of what was happening, the path forward had two clear roads. You either handle it in a way that will produce a positive result or you backtrack to familiar territory and live in the negative. 

In the end, I had a decision to make and my feelings about what kind of father I wanted to be played largely into it. I had a choice to make that would not only be part of my story but also the beginning of someone else’s chapter too. 

I wasn’t on the precipice of a divorce alone. My kid was in this too, he just didn’t know it yet. 

Still, I decided then and there that I wanted my response to the situation to be from a position of strength and hope instead of fear and avoidance. I wasn’t mentally tough enough to handle what was happening but I could do my best to be. 

So I did nothing. I went to bed. 

The Next Morning

I woke up the next morning after what was perhaps the worst night’s sleep ever and attempted to have the most normal morning I could piece together. I tried to have the most “Tuesday” experience I could and if it was going to be held in place by scotch tape, string, and prayers then so be it.

“Hey pal,” I said in my most normal Dad voice I could muster when I got my kid out of bed that morning. “Time to get after it.”

I got him up, dressed, and made him breakfast. He stared blankly at his iPad and made his way through cereal and I started blankly at him, my mind a blur of thoughts. He asked where his mom was that morning — kids are forever super tuned-in to changes — and I told him she had to go to work early. Nice and normal, all good. 

I made sure he was occupied while I got myself ready for the day, and gritted my teeth into a vice while I showered, shaved, and got dressed.  

I remember grabbing my kid so we could brush our teeth together and shoving an electric toothbrush into the narrow slot between my cheek and wall of teeth. I saw myself in the mirror, my face taut with muscles and emotion. I looked deep into my own eyes and saw myself for my own humanity, a skull with eyes on a face of flesh. I looked at my nose and imagined past it to the narrow hole in my bone there. I studied my rows of teeth clenched together below pink gums and they reminded me that despite everything else, I was just a skeleton wrapped in flesh driven by thought and emotion. 

I looked at the skeleton wielding an electric toothbrush, mechanically shifting it in and out of his skull, and thought of the fleshy muscle encased in the round apparatus atop my shoulders that was pulling the strings throughout that morning. 

I gave that big pink gummy muscle an A- for handling the situation and snapped back into reality to realize I was chuckling softly at myself. 

My control center embraced this notion, processed it, and produced a humorous response. I laughed into the mirror, spitting a bit of toothpaste in the process and peppering the mirror with specks of white.

I laughed, my kid laughed because I was laughing, and I knew the best thing I could’ve ever done in my situation was what I was doing right then and there. I was doing nothing at all. 

I put my kid in the car, dropped him off at daycare, and went to work. I didn’t know exactly how I would get through tomorrow but I’d handled today pretty well and I decided that was going to have to be enough.