Turn and Face the Strain

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time

Yeah, my life is all about changes these days. Some painful changes and some quite the opposite, but changes none the less. When last we talked I confessed to having a heart attack, which seems like a real game-changer in the game of life, but in my case it was only the tip of the iceburg. Something happened to me that was unexpected as I lay on the table in the Cath Lab at Pomona Valley Hospital.

Like I said before I had an angiogram, angioplasty and three stents placed in my Left Anterior Descending artery during the hour and half procedure. I was awake through the entire thing and to be honest even through the wonderful morphine haze I was scared shitless. I knew as soon as I got on the table that I would be a different man when I was wheeled out, if I was wheeled out. As they cut open the artery in my groin and began pumping dye into my blood I knew with 100% certainty that I had put myself on that table, that the poor choices I had made in my life blocked my artery, though at the time I didn't know it was 100% blocked.

Something else happened that changed me as well. While I was laying there at one point I could feel them working inside my heart. It felt like my heart jumped and at that moment I did not know if something really good had just happened or if I had just died. So I held my breath and waited to see what the afterlife was like, if there was one. And while I was waiting I felt the deepest sense of regret for the way my life had gone, in particular for my marriage.

I've been married 26 years and neither my wife nor I are the same people who tied the knot lo those many years ago. We had drawn apart; where we had few common interests in the beginning, over time we had even fewer. For a number of years now my wife would tell me, once a month or so, how unhappy she was being with me, how I brought little joy into her life. With these changes came a decided lack of passion and desire in our relationship. Still, it wasn't deplorable, it was livable, hell it was comfortable and that was the problem. My wife was not happy and I was not really satisfied but it was a comfortable existence, so we stayed together even though we maybe should not have.

When the moment ended and I was still alive I knew that my life had really changed, that I could not live causing my wife pain and that I could not live the rest of my life longing for a passion that just no longer existed. So, while recovering from a heart attack, while my wife was being the sweetest to me she had been in years, I hurt her again, hopefully for the last time, because though I still love her deeply, it was no longer enough, and I moved out of our house and my comfortable existence and into the unknown.

When I try to make a list of the things I have lost in the past two weeks, it is scary, but I have to feel it is worth it. My wife will no longer be hurt by me and will have a chance at finding someone who doesn't make her unhappy, but instead fills her with joy. And I have, amazingly and unexpectedly, found the passion and desire I so missed. More on this next time.