Am I Still a Proud Man?

One of the things I’ve always taken considerable pride in, other than my children, is that my divorce didn’t change me.

Despite the pain, anger and heartbreak, I emerged fundamentally the same person. I hadn’t become bitter, cynical or resentful. I never fully understood why my marriage ended, but eventually accepted that I probably never would. And somehow, that was enough.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that being single at 49 might succeed where divorce had failed, and that maybe I no longer have the same reasons to be proud.

Lately, I’ve caught myself behaving in ways I don’t particularly like. Checking my phone, interpreting silences, questioning intentions and wondering what people might be thinking of me. I’ve become remarkably accomplished at constructing entire narratives from messages that haven’t arrived.

It’s an exhausting talent, and one I never particularly wanted.

Perhaps most unsettling is the gradual erosion of trust. Not simply trust in others, but trust in my own judgement. I’ve discovered that affection doesn’t necessarily guarantee permanence, that apparent certainty can disappear overnight, and that sometimes the absence of an explanation is the only explanation you’ll receive.

And somewhere along the way, I’ve become more guarded, more suspicious, and considerably less comfortable with uncertainty.

I’m looking for someone who makes me feel secure, yet the process of looking has given me countless reasons to feel insecure.

But perhaps what troubles me most isn’t how I’ve begun to see other people. It’s how I’ve begun to see myself.

Even now, I worry about how people might remember me. Or perhaps, more troublingly, whether they’ll remember me at all. Whether I left some small, positive footprint in their lives.

Oscar Wilde once observed that “there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Perhaps there’s something rather human in that. We worry about what others might think of us, while quietly hoping that we mattered enough for them to think of us at all.

As I have become more critical of my own behaviour recently, I find myself wondering whether others have seen me differently too. Whether, without intending to, I’ve deposited a less than favourable memory of me in someone’s life. I don’t know that I have, but the possibility troubles me. After all, good intentions don’t erase consequences, even if the injured party was just me. And perhaps that troubles me because I’ve always hoped to be known for my kindness rather than my shortcomings.

And perhaps that tells me something important.

Because beneath all this second-guessing, I still care about being a decent human being. I still believe in kindness, thoughtfulness and treating people well. Those things haven’t changed.

Perhaps I’m not becoming someone I dislike, but simply experiencing feelings that seem foreign to the person I’ve always known myself to be, and confusing the two.

I’d like to think this is temporary. That somewhere beneath the uncertainty, the man who emerged from divorce with his optimism and faith in people intact is still there.

I don’t think I’ve become a worse person.

But I have become someone who questions things he once took for granted.

And I miss the man who didn’t feel the need to question that.