Episode 36: Technicolor Blues

Episode 36: Technicolor Blues

Excerpts from "The Petty Chronicles" Every Monday

Why do I continue to try to see my marriage in black and white when life is such a Technicolor affair? I loved him madly, I never really loved him. He made me laugh, he made me miserable. He loved me, he never know what love was. I could second guess my marriage until I’m blue in the face, but really it’s not my best color. And more importantly, I have discovered that second guessing myself and my past is very bad for me. It’s like trying to drive down the road while looking in the rearview mirror; I’m not going to move forward that way. 

But then I have to wonder: Do we ever truly move on from the devastating moments that pepper our days like penalty flags on the field of life? Or do they hang on forever, becoming a permanent part of our emotional makeup like waterproof mascara or lipstick that doesn’t rub off? In the end it all comes back to the same old thing: I can’t make sense of any of it. Yet I continue to do the tango with this black and white thinking in a desire to move on and in the end, all I’m left with is tired feet and a worn out groove in the floor.

In some ways, being married is like being one of those crazy storm chasers. You don’t know exactly when a tornado might pop up and when it does you don’t know what direction it might take, but you chase it just the same, hoping to head it off in the nick of time. You want to be able to say you saw the worst of it, got tossed around a bit and lived to tell the tale — to look back and laugh at the sheer tenacity it took to pull you through. But sometimes the unstoppable force of the storm is just too much for you and you spin out of control.

Unfortunately, that was our story. The tornado of our marriage flattened us.

In the end, all I’m really looking for is closure and a way to move on, and I am still having trouble finding it. I’d love to wrap up the 12 years I spent with my ex in a nice, neat package as if the contents weren’t messy and complicated. As if there was never any pain and no good times ever existed at all. As if we were happy until we were heartsick, contented until we were wretched, in love until we were not. Like it all rested on the flip of a coin. Like it happened in a moment that we could have seen if we’d only been paying attention. But it’s not that simple. Love never is.

Check out new episodes of The Petty Chronicles every Monday.

Click the following to learn about The Petty Chronicles and its author, Rachel Gladstone