A little side trip

I am going to take a little side trip here from my journey through Europe and tell you another story, a completely different one. Last night my phone rang at 11:30 pm. I answered it to hear the voice of the current wife of my very ex-husband. She wanted the phone number of my daughter, said my very ex-husband was in the hospital, had been for a year, and was much worse, extremely ill. (I have since found out that most of this is exaggerated, which is her style.) Apparently he didn�t have his daughter�s phone number so I gave it to her. The phone rang again at 12:30 am. This time the current wife of my very ex-husband said the number I gave her had been disconnected. She had, actually, written one of the digits down wrong. So I gave her the right number and hung up. Then I had a terrible stomachache. Today I feel very angry and at times want to scream and/or cry, I�m not sure which, whenever I think about him, the very ex-husband.

What I have come to realize today is that these are my feelings; they come from long ago, were charged up, heated up and spewed out like a volcano with the thought of this man dying, finally, after all these years, taking with him some of my unresolved feelings. (We haven�t spoken in years, by his choice, and probably never will again whether he lives or dies.) What I realize is that these feelings are not �about� him. They are just my feelings charged up because I expected something different. My marriage was not what I expected. I never expected it to be as bad as it was. �He� did not disappoint me. My "expectations of him" did. And that is what the anger is about, what has to blow up and burn with the volcano. At least I am beginning to see the landscape more clearly now.