Stranger Danger

The thought scheme-theme for the day has been focused on people.  Friends.  Potential Friends. Family.  Lovers.  Potential lovers.  Strangers.

How well do we know any of them?  Really.  How well?

I am 38 years old, fairly sociable, pretty honest, a little fragile, can tell a good joke if I have the right setting, intelligent but not necessarily filled with common sense, picky, wishy-washy and if you catch me on a bad day, can be very inflexible and some might even say: witchy.

In a nutshell, average. 

I've met a lot of people - from all walks of life.  I can laugh with the toothless truck driver and drink martinis with the powerhouse politicians.  I've met and come to know hundreds, even thousands, of people throughout my lifetime.  Of all those people, there is only one person - ONE - who utterly despises me and sees me as someone entirely different from who I really am. 

That would be my ex-spouse.  The ironic thing is that I don't despise him - I despise some of his actions, some of his moodswings (now and then) and some of the places his moral compass points, but not him.

How does one go from loving a person so much that they'd walk down the aisle in front of family and friends and have children with that person to despising that same person?  How does that happen?  Was it some cosmic working by Satan that put us together?

 I only explore this question because I know that many of my readers have gone through the whole divorce thing and hopefully, are struggling with this question.

Is it really because people change? (Because I truly believe that fundamentally, people do not change.  You lend a girl your pencil in middle school without expecting it back, you'll lend money to a friend without anticipating payment;  You break your back in physical labor for work, you'll break your back in physical labor for a friend;  You give a gift but don't expect one back; You love without question and so you always love without question).

So how did I become someone's nemesis?

How does anyone become a nemesis?

More importantly, how does the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with become your nemesis?

Seriously. 

You have those intimate conversations.  You bear your soul when you're in love.  You give your insecurities without worries that they'll ever be used against you.  You swallow those doubts down, deep down, because you figure that he/she must feel the same way that you feel.

And what happens?

Those very same insecurities are used against you in the divorce.  And you become the enemy.  The nemesis.

I once heard that the one who knows you the most, loves you the deepest and is the one who hurts you the most is the one that is hurt the most by you.  It's a paraphrase of something, but really...  you want someone to reveal themselves to you and they do and you love them for it... and then... and then...

What?

You celebrate your 10th anniversary.
You celebrate your 15th anniversary.
You celebrate your 25th anniversary.
You celebrate your 50th anniversary.

And you're miserably unhappy?

Regardless of how the marriage goes, you're still left in pieces.

Memories.
Prayers to God.
Pleas to God.
Pieces.

Someday.
One day.
Someday.
One day.

They're all strangers... after all?