Getting Served

    My mind wanders to nowhere coherent.  I feel separate to what is happening in my own life.  Gulping down more beer, I look to the divorce papers on my table.  The papers I demanded in response to her continued infidelity.
    What sparked the change in her?  I think of how things were, how she used to feel for me, how I was once irreplaceable.  I like to think it was something complex, beyond my understanding.  Someone just told me the simplest answer is often the truth.  It was said about something entirely different, but it rings true.  My wife cheated and left out of boredom and laziness.  She is gone because the infatuation of a new lover is a greater pull for her than love of depth and reality.  
    I feel strange at the thought that I  don’t mourn her loss anymore.  She at least gave me the parting gift of tarnishing herself beyond the point of desire.  Now, with these documents, whatever obligation and duty I had will now also be gone.
    What I have found since she disappeared has been great.  Strength, motivation, true courage in the face of the unknown, such things I lacked.  Things I’ve needed desperately for years.  I feel now on the verge of greatness.  Greatness I would have shared with her, but perhaps would not have achieved without the loss.
    My obligations are now only to me.  My duty to my dreams and desires.  I will write what I see and dream.  I will create love and life out of words.  I will speak to those that dream, seek depth and understanding as I do.
    An old familiar song plays, reminding me of another woman.  A woman who was gone, and now returned to my life.  A relationship that I need now, that I will not again harm or sabotage.  I wonder if perhaps what I’ve gone through served to forge me into something worthy of being back in her life.
    I stand true to my realizations of these past months.  My selflessness served to harm me more than help.  Now, it is time to begin a selfish age.  Selfish, yet retaining the values true to me.  Selfishness that does not sacrifice compassion, grace and integrity.
    The future looms, unknown, unmapped, and as dangerous as ever.  Yet I am excited and hopeful.  I finally believe in my own power of creation.  I will mold my dreams, and not bend contrary to my will ever again.
    The fire is out.  The ashes are mine, to do with as I see fit.