And even now I feel like I’m fucking it up.

And even now I feel like I’m fucking it up.

I found myself texting these words to a friend who’s finalizing his divorce and coming to terms with the nature of his abusive marriage. No one wants to believe they are or have been abused, but once that realization takes hold it’s difficult to see the world in any other way. As Nietzsche said, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you”

We are only tested when we face true opponents. Masturbatory self-improvement is just that, masturbatory; it makes us feel good, but isn’t actually making any headway. So how do you test your sanity after getting out of an abusive relationship and then hoping to have a solid, sane relationship? Unfortunately that means guinae pigs in the form of people we date, even with whom we relationship, and let’s be honest, that results in collateral damage. I can’t even think back to the numbers of people I’ve damaged because I wasn’t emotionally ready for something. Certainly none of it is done with malice, but as much introspection as one can do, and self-analysis, and psycho-analysis, we’re never sure we’re ready until we’re in that foxhole with mortars going off all around us.

That’s me right now – a year into a pretty stellar relationship and mortars are starting, the abyss is peering back, and I’m scared. Scared that I’m fucking it all up – again. Again, yes. No, it’s not rational, no I couldn’t fix my marriage, fix my husband, save my children, but I still feel woefully responsible for it all. Guilty and responsible. Ha! I always say guilt is a useless emotion, and yet if I look into the abyss it tells me I feel guilty.

As I sit in the parking lot of a liquor store chain smoking and crying, trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong I find myself at a loss. What's the next rational step? There never seems to be a road map for emotional mine fields, or self sabotage, or anything. We're blindly feeling around in the dark abyss, to open our eyes would be fruitless, it would only further solidify my knowledge that I simply know nothing.

Where to go from here? Suck it up? Fake it 'til you make it? Keep calm and carry on? All these maxims are hollow, words with no meaning; the things we tell ourselves and others when we know there's nothing good to say.

I have no answers. I look at my wrist with the word "believe" marked in the skin, a bittersweet memory that I should believe, In what I've never really been able to say. As an atheist it can't be God, or a higher power. Believe it will get better? This too shall pass? In myself? Ha, that's what I believe in least of all. Believe. Believe in the immutable truth that everything changes. Nothing lasts forever. As the Buddhists say, be like water, constantly flowing even when it's rocky.