This little prose is adapted from a journal entry I wrote on the morning of August 15, 2024. It is very personal and not edited.
Examining feels is like peeling an onion. There are always more layers than you expect. You might not even be able to peel all the way. That is why I find the question “how are you” to be so hard to answer. I don’t like to just respond with “fine” or “I’m doing well”. That doesn’t seem like a genuine answer.
When a coworker asked on Monday that question, I started going into a long story about why I was feeling sad. I don’t think he expected a simple question to lead to a drawn-out story but I wanted to reply in full. I was feeling sad and for multiple reasons.
- My mom just left from a Houston visit and I miss her presence.
- My significant other is moving away next week and I won’t see her on the same cadence.
- My sister is visiting my parents in Atlanta but I won’t see her because she still isn’t talking to me.
- Memories of my ex-wife surface from time to time.
Each of these bullet points would require stories in themselves to fully understand the degree of how I feel. For my sister’s relationship, to summarize, several years ago we got into an altercation which I instigated when she came and visited me. I acted exactly like how my dad treated me when I was growing up: angry, judgmental and belittling. I was trying to motivate her to have more confidence and come out of her shell but what I was doing was extremely demotivating. I have apologized several times since but she has not forgiven me. Since then, she hasn’t talked to me and when I’m in the vicinity she pretends there’s no one there. You can call it immature but it really hurts.
On my ex-wife, memories there are like icebergs that surface from time to time which can capsize a boat. She (of age 28 as of 2024) cheated on me with a man about her grandpa’s age (he turned 73 years old this year). Worse, she still expected to acquire half the community assets. She felt no remorse and justified her behavior because she “fell out” of love with me and “fell in” love with him. To her, I still owed her money because she rightfully deserved it as my legally defined wife. This is despite the fact that she didn’t even live with me for half our marriage since she was living with him. $20K+ lawyer fees later and she still ended up with half the community assets even though she made none of that income. In truth, he is just giving her all the fancy gifts and nice things that I was not willing to buy since I wanted her to be able to attain some degree of self-sufficiency. A cheater, liar and gold-digger is awarded by the legal system with money just because of a formality called marriage.
You can probably say I’m still angry. But it is more complicated than that. Sometimes, past good memories surface like our honeymoon in Fiji where we talked about coming back 5 years from now and maybe seeing a different island. I remember the scent of the sea and how excited we were looking at the crystal blue waters and fish when we snorkled and kayaked. I recall the sky was so blue as well and the waters would reflect what is up in the heavens. It would storm every day and there’ll be soft rain. The food was prepared fresh and heartily as well with lots of fruits and juices. There are numerous other memories that inadvertently appear at times in my mind and heart like the trips hiking in north Georgia or Disney trips with her family. When they come, I feel an immense amount of sadness mixed in with some simmering anger.
So you see, the question “how are you?” is not an easy one for me. I think to answer it truly unfolds a complete answer that reveals the complexity of human experience. There’s probably even more emotions inside that I’m not yet aware of but will discover over time.
