Constant reminders

Last night as I was getting ready to take a shower for some reason my mind drifted towards recollection.  I paused and looked at the bedroom, recalling what the room looked like for the last 11 years versus how it looks now.  (sparse)

I realized how surprising it is that I have not done more of this since Ali and I split.  You have to figure out of the two of us I have had a potentially more difficult path to navigate when it comes day to day existence.  The reason being is every day I am surrounded by the visual reminders of what we built together for more than a decade.  I could easily look in any corner of the house and think about some sort of related back story. The same situation occurs outside where years and years of our sweat equity is on display.

In an instant I can recall the anticipation/excitement from various past projects, the struggle associated with their completion and the pride in the final outcome.  Of course I can also quickly feel the sorrow that in a way, much of it now feels hollow, since these things came from the efforts of two people working as a team.  The dissolution of that team changes the way I look at all of those things.

Of course having the dogs not under the roof has been rather brutal as well but it would only be worse for Ali so that is just a weight I have to bear.

On my computer at home I have set up a rotating desktop of imagery.  Almost all of my images are from the various road trips Ali, the dogs and I have taken over the past 6 or 7 years.  As many fond memories as I have of those experiences, each time a new image flips up it has the potential to deliver a little pinch of sorrow.

All of these things make me sad, but they don’t make me regret the split, as we both hope that decision leads to us both being happier in the long run.

As I said in the beginning of this post, as miserable as this all sounds, for the most part I have been able to successfully steer my mind away from dwelling on these things.  If that was not the case I would probably be pushing to sell the house and rid myself of all of these visual reminders of what was.  For whatever reason, last night, I just lost control of the steering wheel for a bit.