I woke up tired this morning.
Not destroyed.
Not in pain.
Just tired.
The kind of tired where your body is awake but your nervous system still feels like it would like another hour or two before participating in life.
I’ve been trying to figure out this sleep thing for weeks now.
Trazodone doesn’t seem to work for me the way it works for some people.
I can take it, sleep a few hours, wake up groggy, and still feel like I never actually got the restoration my body was looking for.
But I wasn’t worried about it this morning.
I have room to rest.
If I need a nap, I can take one.
I’m learning not to turn every imperfect night into another problem I have to solve immediately.
That alone feels different.
Yesterday was interesting.
Not dramatic.
Just interesting.
JJ and I were on two Zoom calls together.
One was our weekly team call.
The other was our client group call.
And on both calls, I noticed something.
Every time I spoke, there was an expression on her face that I interpreted as annoyance.
Not an eye roll.
Not anything overt.
Just a look.
Disconnected.
Checked out.
Maybe irritated.
And I want to be careful here because that is my interpretation.
I could be completely wrong.
I know her well enough that I think I was picking up on something, but I can’t climb inside her body and tell you what she was actually feeling.
I just noticed it.
And surprisingly, I wasn’t hurt.
I wasn’t angry.
I didn’t feel the old urge to go:
What did I do now?
I felt compassion.
She was supposed to leave weeks ago.
She postponed her trip twice because my recovery took a turn and I had to go back into surgery.
Now Saturday is coming.
The real separation.
Not separate bedrooms.
Not passing each other in the hallway.
Not living like roommates in the same house.
An airport.
A hug.
A goodbye.
And then two people who have spent 26 years together going in different directions.
I can only imagine there’s probably fear there.
Maybe excitement.
Maybe relief.
Maybe sadness.
Maybe all of it.
And again, I don’t really know.
Neither of us knows how Saturday is going to feel.
I don’t know if we’ll cry.
If we’ll feel empty.
If we’ll feel free.
If we’ll feel terrified.
If we’ll hug each other and know somehow that this isn’t the end.
Or if there will be some part of us that senses it is.
I don’t know.
And for once, I’m not trying to know.
What I do know is that when I look around this new home, I see JJ everywhere.
Everything is organized.
Everything has a place.
She made sure of that.
She put the house together while I was recovering.
And that is who she is.
Very organized.
Very put together.
Me?
Not always.
I like my piles.
I put things where I know where they are.
She moves things because, in her mind, she’s organizing them.
Then I ask where the hell she put my stuff.
And that annoys her.
It annoys me too.
Which is actually funny when I think about it.
Because before this marriage, I used to be pretty organized myself.
I remember living alone when I was younger.
I’d have my dining table set like guests were coming over.
Tablecloth.
Napkins.
Plates.
Glasses turned upside down.
Everything neat.
Everything clean.
And somewhere over the years, I became the guy with piles everywhere.
Project pile.
Mail pile.
Stuff-I-don’t-want-anybody-moving pile.
So I’m actually curious.
When JJ leaves, who am I in this house?
Does organized Colin come back?
Do the piles multiply?
Do I rebel completely against the way the house has been kept for the last two decades?
I have no fucking idea.
And there’s something oddly exciting about that.
Not because keeping a clean house is some profound spiritual discovery.
Because I’m going to begin finding out which parts of my life are actually me.
This morning I took Chapo for a walk.
And I noticed the breeze.
That sounds ridiculously simple.
But I really noticed it.
I grew up here in the Valley from the time I was around nine until I was 29.
And there’s something about the morning air here.
Cool without being cold.
Just enough breeze to feel it against your skin.
It felt familiar.
Chapo was doing what Chapo does.
Smell.
Pee.
Smell.
Pee.
Walk ten feet.
Repeat.
There’s a house a few doors down being remodeled.
I could hear hammering.
Some sort of drilling.
Someone mowing a lawn.
Just regular neighborhood sounds.
And across the street was this woman I’ve seen outside several mornings.
I think she may be Alvin’s wife.
Alvin is one of the neighbors who pulled up in his truck when I first moved in, jumped out, welcomed me to the neighborhood and gave me a hug.
I wasn’t exactly sure where he lived.
Now I think he may be almost directly across the street.
This woman was outside taking care of their lawn.
And when I say taking care of it, I mean this yard looked like it had been manicured with tweezers.
She was squatting comfortably on the grass, manually picking individual leaves off the lawn and dropping them into a bag.
One leaf.
Then another.
Then another.
Not a leaf anywhere.
And she looked happy.
Not fake-happy.
Not performing for anybody.
Just smiling.
Enjoying what she was doing.
I said good morning.
She looked up, smiled and said good morning.
And I kept walking.
But I remember thinking:
How fucking awesome is that?
This woman is outside picking leaves off her lawn one at a time.
And she looks joyful.
I know I talk about gratitude a lot lately.
I can almost hear somebody saying:
“Here comes Grateful Greg again.”
There’s actually something worth distinguishing there.
Because I think sometimes gratitude can become another way of not feeling.
People can be hurting like hell and immediately say:
But I’m grateful.
Everything happens for a reason.
God has a plan.
And sometimes that’s truth.
Sometimes it’s armor.
I don’t feel like that’s what’s happening with me right now.
What I’m experiencing feels more like awareness.
I’m noticing shit.
That’s different.
The woman picking leaves.
The lawnmower.
The breeze.
The sound of construction.
Chapo sniffing everything in sight.
The fountain outside my window.
JJ’s face on a Zoom call.
My own body.
My own reactions.
There’s a certain level of presence that I don’t remember having this often.
For so much of my life, I’ve been in motion.
Make the money.
Build the business.
Solve the problem.
Help the client.
Build the body.
Fix the relationship.
Build the team.
Figure out what’s next.
Go.
Go.
Go.
And when you live like that long enough, I wonder if you stop actually living.
You’re moving through life.
But are you in it?
The other morning, I sat on the couch with the windows open.
Everything outside was almost completely still.
No cars.
No birds.
Barely any movement in the trees.
And all I could hear was the water flowing through the fountain outside my front door.
Today, I sat in almost exactly the same spot.
Same open windows.
Same breeze.
But I could barely hear the fountain.
The hammering from the house down the street was louder.
The drilling.
The lawnmower.
Neighborhood sounds.
And I found myself listening beyond my front yard.
Reaching farther with my ears.
Just noticing.
And it made me think about how often we wake up and immediately leave ourselves.
Open the email.
Check the bank account.
Someone didn’t get their order.
Somebody on the team has a crisis.
A customer is pissed off.
A bill is due.
Something needs to be fixed.
And suddenly your body is sitting in one place while your mind has been dragged into seventeen different situations.
You haven’t even finished your coffee and you’re already gone.
You left your body.
I know that place well.
And lately, I feel like I’m coming back.
There’s another interesting thing happening as I share all of this publicly.
Men are reaching out to me.
Some of them are moving through something similar.
Marriage changing.
Relationships feeling different.
Standing at a crossroads and not knowing what comes next.
And what I appreciate about those conversations is that we’re not getting together to make our partners wrong.
I’m not interested in that.
There are five words I’ve lived by for years:
How did I create this?
That question has changed my life.
And I know some people will immediately argue with the wording.
You don’t create everything that happens to you.
I understand that.
People make choices.
Life happens.
Illness happens.
Betrayal happens.
Circumstances appear that you never asked for.
But the question is not about beating myself up.
It’s not:
How is this all my fault?
It’s:
What did I participate in?
What did I allow?
What did I ignore?
Where did I abandon myself?
What pattern did I keep repeating?
What did I choose?
What didn’t I choose?
And now that I’m here, what am I going to do with it?
Because if every answer to why my life looks the way it does starts with somebody else’s name, I have no power.
I’m waiting for them to change.
I’m waiting for them to apologize.
I’m waiting for them to understand me.
I’m waiting for them to behave differently so I can finally feel okay.
Fuck that.
That’s a prison.
Life is a mirror, not a window.
Look at yourself first.
Not to abuse yourself.
Not to shame yourself.
To understand yourself.
Because the only person I actually have any authority to change is me.
And that’s where this separation becomes an inside game for me.
I can look at JJ and list everything I wish had been different.
She could probably do the same with me.
But that doesn’t help me become who I’m trying to become.
I want to understand where I collapsed on myself.
Where I didn’t speak.
Where I spoke but didn’t listen.
Where I tried to fix.
Where I expected her to carry things she couldn’t possibly carry.
Where I expected myself to carry things I shouldn’t have been carrying either.
And I can do all of that without making our 26 years a mistake.
That matters to me.
There has been love.
Kindness.
Friendship.
Sex.
Joy.
Anger.
Forgiveness.
Resentment.
Business.
Family.
Dogs.
Homes.
Dreams.
Heartbreak.
All of it.
A whole fucking life.
Now we’re standing somewhere neither of us has stood before.
Saturday she leaves.
I stay.
And we find out what happens next.
This morning, though, Saturday wasn’t happening yet.
I was walking with Chapo.
Feeling the breeze.
Watching this woman pick leaves off her lawn.
Hearing the neighborhood waking up around me.
And I realized:
I think I’ve been missing parts of my own life.
Not intentionally.
I was just too busy managing it.
Too busy building it.
Too busy protecting it.
Too busy fixing it.
Too busy worrying about where it was going.
And there it was the whole time.
A breeze against my skin.
A neighbor smiling.
A dog sniffing a bush.
A hammer in the distance.
Water flowing from a fountain.
The expression on the face of a woman I’ve loved for 26 years.
Men reaching out because something I’m sharing makes them feel less alone.
My own feelings moving through me without requiring me to immediately do something about them.
Maybe this is what presence feels like.
Not sitting cross-legged on a mountain without a thought in your head.
Maybe it’s just actually being where you are.
So today I’m celebrating that.
Presence.
Not knowing where this marriage ends.
Not knowing who I’ll be when this house becomes mine alone.
Not knowing how Saturday will feel.
Not knowing what parts of myself I’m about to rediscover.
And not needing to know today.
I’m still becoming Colin.
And I’m going to keep sharing it.
Not because I have the answer.
Not because I think everybody should do what I’m doing.
But because the more honest I become about my own life, the more other people seem willing to become honest about theirs.
And maybe that’s how we remind each other that we’re not alone.
Before I finish this, I keep coming back to that woman across the street.
Squatting in her front yard.
Picking leaves off the grass one by one.
Smiling.
Maybe she was simply cleaning her lawn.
That’s probably all it was.
And maybe the beautiful part is that I didn’t need it to mean anything more than that.
I was present enough to see her.
And maybe for much of my life, I wouldn’t have been.
Much love.
Namaste.
Colin F. Watson