fiftyfreeandsingle

In a way I have lost track of time, which is a little scary, it was only today when I checked that I realised that its been eight months and fifteen days since I became fifty free and single. I have been in a daze for much of that time, lost and seaching, on my self-imposed roller coaster, emotion, pain, anger, excitement, days of downed right misery, days of discovery and I have to admit some days simply lost.

Were I a complete depressive I might be forgiven for thinking that I am alone.  That everyone & everything that ever meant anything leaves me in the end, in the last half dozen years or so my parents died, my son has come of age and is his own man with his own life, I’ve managed to lose or loose old friends, my  health made a partial exit, my self belief, always shaky has likewise taken a battering and gone on vacation. My dog died,  my home of two decades will shortly be going and my wife left me. The biggest shocker of all was the last, I had no idea of what was happening, at fifty years of age, literally on my birthday my world or what I thought was my world and all that I understood to be certain evaporated overnight.

Since that point in time 260 days have come and gone, what I have I done in all that time? Maybe I have not made the best use of that time, but I didn’t really know what to do, so, I just did whatever I felt I needed to to get through.

I’ve embarked on new relationships, I’ve lost friends and found new ones, stayed out til 5am in a club or two, dated, blogged, meditated, lost 56 lbs in weight, I’ve cried, I’ve laughed, travelled to India & North Africa, I’ve questioned everything I believed in, the people I trusted, most of all I’ve questioned myself. I never expected my relationship to fail, it was the only thing I never questioned, it ended in a sordid and sorry pile of lies, deception and untruths. The final knife twisting thrusts broke me totally. Since then I’ve been going through the pieces and trying to stick them together, to understand and begin to live my life in a different way, I’ve not found it easy.

I began to lay myself bare, to blog, to seek out new connections, new friends, I sought out other people along the way and heard stories that made my own seem insignificant by comparison, others who loved and lost and were broken, utterly. They struggled, sometimes they fought, they too cried, above all they survived, and in their stories and their expriences it helped me learn about myself, some inspired me. I stripped myself bare, down to my very bones, turned myself inside out, picked over the pieces, nearly lost myself entirely at times, but I began to find something about myself, I began to find me and what makes me tick. I looked hard at myself, for the first time in my life I began to see somebody that had value, most of all I found a Man, a good Man.

My journey continues, it’s become about much more than the end of a relationship. When the story started it was because of a marriage break-up, I needed to find answers, answers which I didnt even have the questions for. It all came down to a single word why, why any of it, why me.

There will be no clear answer to why my marriage ended, none that will ever satisfy me, in a way its not the point, the point is why me, what am I here for and what am I doing about it, 260 days on and still counting, I am alive, I am fifty, I am single, the world is here to be explored and exprerienced and lived. Nothing holds me back from discovering it except myself and now my time for emotion and loss has to move on, now it becomes about change and the road forward, the past is gone, there is only now and what is to come. Now its time for the nitty gritty of dividing assets, dividing possessions and the accumulated detritius of the past, throwing out the old and starting again on a new path, into the future, eyes forward, no looking back.

I had never thought I would find myself here at fifty years of age, naked, open and on a new path, its a little like being born all over again, there’s a lot of noise and mess around at a birth, a fair bit of screaming and that’s exactly what happened this time round.  I had become a stale and cynical man, If I looked deeped down in my heart there was little joy, I went through the motions, I existed. All that was blown away, in a way now all is possiblity, at fifty years of age, my world has opened up, I feel alive, vulnerable, slightly scared at times, but with hopes and dreams anew,  life is a whole new game.

My life – all lives are what we make them and I realise I can never be truly alone, every soul in this world is on the same journey, see you down the road no doubt.