I have spent most of my life in places where I can count on a horizon solidly anchored in hills and mountains. I know without thinking they will be there in the morning, tonight, tomorrow, next month, next year, ten years out. Recently though, I was traveling and I landed in the dark and the next morning when I looked out my hotel window, I was shocked to see there was nothing but endless, well nothing. Not a mountain, not a hill, just an endlessly flat horizon. I felt disoriented, unsteady – my familiar world was gone.
Divorce is like that – the sudden loss of the familiar horizon, the projected future I counted on, lived with as an anchor in my life. I cannot imagine, as hard as I try, that I will ever have another camping trip or holiday dinner, ever feel anything but disoriented, sad and unsteady. Fear becomes my constant companion as I look around and see nothing but the unfamiliar.
My mountains, I know they are waiting for me when I return home. In divorce, as my anchor relationship dissolves around me and the home I lived in is forever changed, it helps to remember that eventually, inevitably, my horizon will change, I will reorient and build a familiar world again.