“Perhaps thinking everything through to the end was not a healthy thing to do.” Rubashov. Darkness at Noon.

Thinking the dissolution of my marriage to my wife through to the end is undoubtedly not a healthy thing to do. It becomes obsessive in its search for answers to questions that were never asked. This thinking has become obsessive.

Tomorrow I must go to my wife’s attorney to sign the final papers of marriage dissolution. There are ten documents, each detailing some aspect of the final settlement and judgment. I did not contest the divorce, unwanted as it was. There was little point to add anger and revenge, much less expense, to the process. B did not want that, nor did I. We had both suffered previously at the hands of vengeful spouses.

Still, the finality of the documentation, witnessed by a Notary, cuts deep into my ever-thinner skin. Every ounce of me knows I am better off. The freedom I’m enjoying living on my own, even in these temporary conditions, is telling me what I missed. Just being comfortable in my own space, listening to the music I like, painting, not worrying about toothpaste in the sink or an open drawer, is a relief and a pleasure, all the harsh edges gone.

I miss her companionship, even if we were only roommates sharing a house for most of our time together. I miss our dog. I have fond memories of the times early in our marriage when I think she did love me. I loved her, and some kernel inside of me loves her still. It’s what drives the obsession with questions that cannot be answered.

I do not miss being judged, and found mostly guilty.

Still, I ask why, and try to piece together a narrative that explains it all, like some grand unifying theory.

The Koestler quote at the beginning wasn’t random. There’s a red thread that runs through her life that connects her most formative experiences with what came to pass with me. This is, of course, entirely speculative, based only on the bits and pieces of personal history she chose to relate and what others have told me.

I could be wrong. Maybe she divorced me only for purely mundane reasons with no underlying drama of preordained inevitability: wanting too much togetherness, not enough money, always being there, invasive. Hurtful things, spoken with her clarity of vision. She said I would try to anticipate what she wanted in order to please her, for fear of displeasing her. That was true.

The red thread I see is her adherence to old principles of her second youth.  In its purest form these principles sought to abolish social injustice throughout the world. My wife committed her life and career to this ideal. If social justice could be achieved, what price would be too high? Maybe millions would have to die for a billion to be happy—would that be worth it?

Arthur Koestler wrote, “A … revolutionary is forever damned to do what he loathes most: become a butcher in order to stamp out butchery, sacrifice lambs so lambs will no longer be sacrificed.”

I’m not suggesting she sacrificed lambs, only me.

What I am suggesting is a steely harshness that made compromise impossible. There was no middle way. Loyalty to her principles was more important than acceptance. It would have been “bad faith.”

I saw these principles at work in many aspects of her life, her relationships. I wasn’t the only one to experience their wrong end. I wasn’t blind—even seeing them too late.

I will get through the legal document signing tomorrow, and move on, and away. I’ve booked my one-way flight to Boston, leaving January 4^th.

The darkness will remain in the night, where it belongs, and the sun will shine during the day.

Leaving San Francisco for Boston in January inevitably means leaving people behind, friends I have made over the past eleven years. Good friends will remain good friends. They always have in my life. And with Adam here in Oakland my returning to the Bay Area is certain, and likely frequent. My close friends will stay close in my orbit.

Still, many friends will be left behind, and in time fade into people I once knew.

I often think about the sets of friends I’ve made here, associated with chapters of my life, the circle of friends that came with EL for example—people I saw all the time for a year or two, and then never again. They were friends of hers, and I was merely the accompanying guy, the guy who came along with her, never the main event.  A few I thought were actually my friends, too, or came to be. They didn’t last, even when we had other connections outside of my relationship. A few were disappointments.

It’s entirely my decision to leave, to go back East as they say here. I could stay, and have reasons to stay. While I believe my decision to move to Boston is the right decision for me now, I’m apprehensive. It’s another new start, a beginning when I thought I was on a path of forever ending, of spending my years together with the woman I married, the woman I loved, in this city by the Bay. I never contemplated a different journey.

Is it her fault? The rupture to my life’s plan was not my decision. It was entirely hers. Maybe we could call her the combustible spark, the explosion that blew up my life. My decisions after that ending are mine.

A large piece of my decision to move away is to be away from her. I don’t think she understands this. We have too many points of possible intersection, too many friends in common, the South End, shared likes. I thought I might be able to be “friends.” I haven’t seen her for two months and as the weeks pass the thought of seeing her upsets me. I don’t want it. I was in our old shopping neighborhood today and before venturing into our favorite grocery store I carefully checked out the aisles before wandering around. I’m not going back there again. There are two occasions coming in December where I could see her, and one I will definitely avoid even though my presence is requested. I don’t need the reminder of the hurt and dislocation she has inflicted.  I’m fine without it.

Yet, to move away from her, I also move away from many friends who have become part of my life here: my guys at Cow Hollow; my friends at the South End. Friends I’ve made though work. Maybe I use the term “friends” too loosely. My wife often corrected me when I would refer to someone as a friend, and she would say, no, he’s just an acquaintance. I know, even as her husband, I had “no equity.” She told me so.

I look back at all the friends I’ve had and lost, people, now, I just once knew. I guess that’s the way life is, or at least contemporary life. We don’t stay in one place. Relationships are unstable and don’t last. Commitments aren’t commitments. There’s no social glue; many weak ties. No love that’s true.

On a brighter note, I’ve discovered through this year’s unwanted experiences—the end of my marriage, Adam’s cancer—that my true friends, wherever they are, are truer than ever. Time and distance have no relevance. I am immensely grateful to them. I am lucky to have them with me, now. They will remain with me always.

Maybe this is my future. My friends are spread out over the map of the world. I wish I could see them more often, and perhaps less encumbered I will be able to do so. Still, we are friends, real friends, more meaningfully than many whom I see all the time.

My world will grow larger.

It’s a different journey.