I woke up at 4:28 this morning.
Again.
Fuck.
Another night of not getting enough sleep.
I lay there trying to figure out how many hours I’d actually gotten. Maybe three. Maybe three and a half.
It’s been something like ten or eleven weeks of this shit.
Four hours here.
Five if I’m lucky.
An occasional seven-hour night that feels like a miracle.
And my mind immediately wanted to go there.
My body needs rest.
How the hell am I supposed to heal if I’m not sleeping?
Can I just get a fucking night’s sleep?
But then I remembered something.
I’ve always had this thought that somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning is an angel hour. A time when God might want to speak to me.
So I lay there.
Waiting.
Listening.
Wondering whether there was something I was supposed to hear.
Nothing came.
No profound download.
No voice.
No message.
Just me.
Wide awake.
In the dark.
Eventually, I picked up my phone.
And that’s when the morning started becoming something I hadn’t expected.
I opened Instagram.
There were comments on my posts.
Messages from people.
Some were strangers.
Some were acquaintances I’ve known for decades but never actually met in person.
Some were former customers or clients.
People were telling me their stories.
What they’ve been through.
What they’re going through right now.
How something I’d written about my own life had opened up something in theirs.
And I found myself responding.
Not with a coaching pitch.
Not with a link to a program.
Not trying to turn a conversation into an enrollment.
Just listening.
Sharing.
Sometimes praying with someone.
Sometimes telling a person I see them, I hear them, and I’m grateful they trusted me enough to share what they’re experiencing.
And something hit me.
Social media is actually becoming social for me.
How fucking interesting is that?
For years, I’ve used social media to educate, promote, build businesses, attract clients, and share what I know.
And there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that.
But if I’m being truthful, social media has rarely felt particularly authentic to me.
Not always in how I showed up.
And not always in how I felt received.
There was usually something attached to it.
An objective.
An outcome.
A reason for posting.
Now I’m sharing my journal.
My recovery.
My fears.
My marriage and separation, from the perspective of what I’m experiencing.
My attempts to figure out who the hell I am at 65.
And I’m not asking anybody for anything.
I’m just sharing.
Becoming Colin.
And somehow, there seems to be more conversation.
More honesty.
More connection.
Not because I’ve suddenly figured out how to beat the algorithm.
Because I’m actually talking with people.
And they’re talking with me.
Human beings reaching one another in the middle of life.
I fucking love that.
Then I started thinking about the conversations I’ve been having with my male friends.
Yesterday, a buddy of mine sent me a Marco Polo.
We’d been talking about several things, and when he finally had a chance to respond, he poured into me in a way that filled my tank.
You know when someone just gases you up?
Not with some superficial bullshit.
But because they know you.
They see something in you.
They remind you of who you are when you’re having trouble seeing it yourself.
That’s what it felt like.
And I’ve been having more of those conversations lately.
With men I’ve known for decades.
With men I’ve only recently met.
With my men’s circle.
Somebody will call you out when you’re fucking up.
They’ll bust your ass.
They’ll tease you.
They’ll tell you the truth even when it isn’t particularly comfortable.
But a good friend will also stand beside you when things get difficult.
He’ll defend you when you’re not in the room.
He’ll celebrate you.
He’ll remind you of what you’re capable of.
And he’ll let you do the same for him.
I’ve missed that.
More than I realized.
And this morning, a thought came to me.
Maybe part of the reason I feel so peaceful lately is that I don’t feel alone on this journey anymore.
Maybe that’s it.
I’m not doing this alone anymore.
For a long time, I described myself as isolated.
But this morning, I corrected myself.
I isolated myself.
Not deliberately.
Not because I sat down one day and said, “You know what? I think I’ll cut myself off from the rest of the world.”
It happened gradually.
Over the course of a 26-year marriage, I allowed more and more of my emotional world to revolve around one relationship.
JJ and I had friends along the way.
Good friends.
Couples we spent years with.
But sometimes our lifestyles stopped aligning.
Sometimes people wanted to keep partying and drinking when I no longer wanted that.
Sometimes the conversations were full of gossip.
Sometimes we simply grew in different directions.
And sometimes, even when I had male friends, there was a level of depth and vulnerability I wasn’t willing or able to bring into the relationship.
So I pulled back.
And without really recognizing what I was doing, I made my marriage carry more and more of the weight.
I tried to be everything to one person.
And in some ways, I expected one person to be everything to me.
My lover.
My best friend.
My business partner.
My encourager.
My emotional support.
My entire fucking world.
That’s an impossible amount of weight for one relationship to carry.
I can see that now.
And there’s some sorrow in recognizing it.
Twenty-six years is a long time.
There are friendships I didn’t cultivate.
Conversations I didn’t have.
Parts of myself I didn’t explore.
But I don’t regret my marriage.
I don’t want to erase those years.
I just wish I’d understood some of this sooner.
And I can’t change that.
What I can do is understand it now.
I’ve also been thinking about the kind of man I’m becoming.
For years, I compared myself to other men.
Some men seemed completely comfortable stating what they wanted and getting their way in their relationships.
Sometimes I found their behavior appalling.
Sometimes, if I’m going to tell the whole truth, I envied what looked like their certainty.
They seemed so unconcerned about whether their partners approved.
And there I was, questioning myself.
Wondering whether I was masculine enough.
Whether I was too accommodating.
Whether I was collapsing on myself to maintain peace.
It’s uncomfortable to admit that some of the behavior I envied was controlling.
But I can recognize that now without pretending it was something I actually want to become.
I don’t want to dominate anybody.
I don’t want to control somebody into giving me what I want.
I want to know who I am.
To know what matters to me.
To recognize what I’m available for and what I’m not.
And to express that without needing anger, intimidation, shame, or somebody else’s permission.
I’m no longer available for that.
What an incredibly simple sentence.
And what a journey it has been to understand what it actually means.
Not as a threat.
Not as punishment.
Not as armor built around a wounded little boy.
Just a man who knows himself well enough to decide what belongs in his life.
And who respects someone else’s right to do the same.
I’m still learning.
Of course, all of this brings me back to JJ.
She’s leaving in about a week to begin her own part of this separation.
We don’t know where we’re going to end up.
I don’t know whether we’ll find our way back to one another.
I don’t even know whether that’s what either of us will ultimately desire.
Can you unwind 26 years of habits and ways of relating just because you suddenly have some new awareness?
Can two people change enough to meet one another differently?
Can they learn to honor boundaries that didn’t exist before?
And what happens if the versions of themselves they discover no longer fit together?
I don’t know.
Sometimes that scares me.
Sometimes it’s heartbreaking.
Sometimes the freedom of not knowing feels incredibly liberating.
And sometimes I feel all of it in the same fucking day.
But here’s what I’ve noticed.
Underneath all those moving emotions, there’s been a strange sense of calm.
Not a guarantee that the marriage will survive.
Not certainty that everything will unfold the way I want.
Just this feeling that I can be here.
In this moment.
Without needing to know the ending.
I’m learning to trust myself.
I’m learning to receive support.
I’m learning to let other people be responsible for their own journeys.
And I’m learning that loving someone doesn’t require making them my entire world.
That’s a lot of learning for one old dude before sunrise.
As I look around at the world, there’s so much chaos.
Wars.
People hurting.
Prices going up.
Anger.
Fear.
An endless stream of headlines reminding us of everything that’s wrong.
And then I open my messages.
I hear from a stranger who is struggling and wants to share something.
I listen to a buddy who took the time to send me a voice note.
I read a comment from someone who saw themselves in my story.
I write back.
They respond.
And there it is.
Humanity.
Not some polished version of humanity.
Just people trying to make their way through life.
Some of them having a really fucking hard time.
Some of them finding their feet again.
Some of them offering a little kindness to someone they may never meet.
The suffering in the world is real.
But so is this.
And right now, I’m grateful that I’m experiencing more of it.
I’m grateful that I’m participating.
Not just watching.
Not just posting.
Participating.
And now here I am.
Still in bed.
Still dark outside.
No sunlight cracking through the blackout curtains like yesterday morning.
Just my little dog, Chapo, snoring under the covers.
I started this morning worrying about sleep.
Then I got frustrated.
Then I wondered whether God was trying to tell me something.
I waited for a message that didn’t come.
I picked up my phone.
I found people.
I remembered my friends.
I thought about the years I’d spent isolating myself.
I thought about my marriage.
The unknown.
The man I’m becoming.
And somehow, after all that wandering, I came back to my body.
I scanned it again.
No pain.
Again.
And I realized something.
I feel peaceful.
I feel calm.
I feel safe.
Right here.
Right now.
Maybe that was the message I was looking for.
Or maybe it’s simply what I noticed when I finally stopped looking.
I don’t know.
I don’t have to know.
I’ve still got healing ahead of me.
Antibiotics to finish.
A PICC line that will eventually come out.
Strength to rebuild.
A gym I can’t wait to return to.
A business to keep building.
Friendships to nurture.
A marriage whose future remains unknown.
A whole life that I get to discover.
And for the first time in a long time, I find myself looking forward to the unknown with a little anticipation.
What will today bring?
Who will I meet?
What will I discover about myself?
How much better might I feel?
I don’t know.
But I like this world I’m beginning to live in.
I like the kindness.
I like the connection.
I like being able to share without needing anything back.
I like getting to know myself.
And perhaps most importantly, I like that I’m no longer expecting one person to be my whole world.
Or expecting myself to walk through that world alone.
Maybe that’s part of what Becoming Colin actually looks like.
Not just discovering who I am.
But discovering what it feels like to belong.
Thank you, God.
For the people.
For the friendships.
For the conversations.
For the quiet.
For the little dog snoring beside me.
And for another morning when I can feel peace in my body, even though I have absolutely no idea what the day will bring.
Much love.
Namaste.
Colin F. Watson