It's time for me to write about me, dammit!

Not that you'd have any reason to be aware of this, but for the past few months, I've been writing about the aftermath of my wife's suicide 20 months ago at my Widowed by Suicide blog, focusing mostly on what the hell my son and I are going to do once I sell my mausoleum--uh, I mean house. Well, tonight I was thinking about posting something there when it occurred to me that maybe it was time to emerge from the shadow of this life-defining experience and write about me.

Ah, me. It's been so long, I hardly know the place. Now I remember--before all this shit went down, I was a respected and overworked journalist, a pretty damned good (but terribly out of practice) saxophonist, and a very frustrated world traveler who didn't even have a valid passport. But what I was, more than anything, was naive about so many things. About the pain and anguish that life can dish out. About the importance of being true to oneself even if it means occasionally hurting other people. Or, about the relentless logic I applied to life, which makes sense considering that nothing that can be called traumatic had happened to me in the 40 years before my estranged wife took herself out of the picture.

No longer. Now, with all this grief under my belt, I think I'm becoming the man my wife always wanted me to be. Gee, honey, think you went a little far in making your point? At least the future women in my life will have something to thank you for.

So what message do I want to get across with my first entry here? Maybe something about the fragile tapestry of our lives that we all take for granted. Put my situation aside for the moment--in the past week, I've had two close friends tell me about potentially life-shattering developments that have them shell-shocked. Stop me if you're surprised--both situations have to do with marital struggles.

The first friend is married to a bipolar woman, and time has caught up with him. For years, he thought she was on top of things, getting the right mix of meds and therapy, and so he convinced himself that everything was alright. But steadily, his marriage was devolving into a morass of miscommunication, resentment and, at times, out-and-out hatred. Luckily, he's got the backing of everyone in their lives in terms of the house and custody of the kids, but that's hardly consolation for a man who feels like his life is imploding around him.

The second friend doesn't have kids or a mortgage or really any big responsibilities to make breaking up a bear, but he has this: When he married his wife two years ago, we all thought he was the luckiest man around. He found a woman who would allow him to be the lovable, irresponsible man of leisure to which he'd become accustomed. She was fine with supporting him, fine with him being a grown child, fine with his weekly poker nights with the boys. But like all good things, that fantasy came to pass, and when his wife's vision cleared, she saw the man-child she was with and declared that change was in the offing or she'd be leaving. That's where they are now--he's trying to figure out the degree to which he can change, and they're in counseling. But I know from experience that they've reached a crossroads that's very tough to navigate past successfully.

I guess that what I get out of all of this is that I hope I've graduated from the woe-is-me, how-can-this-be-happening-to-my-life tune that so many of us sing to ourselves when personal tragedy unfolds. The bitter truth is that very few of us escape this life unscathed by tragic events, and so no matter what we're asked to endure, we have to maintain faith that we are strong, and that we can thrive in the face of such unexpected twists and turns.

Well, that, plus I really want to see what happens in the next season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.