I have decided that recovering from a divorce like mine that involved narcissistic discard, Wife Abandonment Syndrome, or the like (or perhaps from any divorce, I don’t know) is like playing a video game. You start out with a lot of hand-holding from experts, and so you make a lot of progress at first. At some point you may even think, “Hey, I think I’ve got this….” Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, WHAM you get killed by a monster or a boss, and you’re sent back to the very beginning of the game.
You’re devastated, but that’s because you didn’t understand the game. You thought recovery was a linear process, like getting through college. No one sends you back to the beginning of college, right? You get to keep your credits even if you take a break. But recovery isn’t linear, it’s cyclical. The good news, though, is that while it’s cyclical it’s not a circle; it’s more like a spiral. When it feels like you get sent back to where you started, you’re actually one revolution higher. Because you remember the game, its moves, and no one can take that knowledge away from you. That’s what I call a ratchet gain. And those ratchet gains help you play through the levels you’ve already beaten faster, make it a little further, a little higher, before you get killed and sent back again.
Sure, it’s still a shock the second time you get knocked back, but by now you’re learning the logic of the game, how to play it: there’s a shortcut here, don’t forget to grab the treasure chest under the bridge, watch out for the goblin hiding around the corner, etc…. You’re also gaining skills and weapons and magic spells as you play: in other words, you’re leveling yourself up. And so when those feelings of shock and despair and worthelessness come at you again, you don’t let them knock you around and mop the floor with you like you used to. You acknowledge and respect them, sure, but you’re not helpless before them. You know you can deflect them, diffuse them, even capture their energy and use it to recover health. As I wrote about before, this truth really came home to me while playing Breath of the Wild: there was a tip displayed on a loading screen that said something like, “Don’t throw yourself against enemies who are too strong for you over and over again. Instead, train, gather resources, and level up your armor. Then, come back to the challenge.” When I did this—when I stopped obsessing about my problem and focused on self-care and personal growth—miraculously my problem didn’t seem so insurmountable when I came back to it.
When you get to this point you won’t be shocked anymore when, say 10 months or a year into your recovery, you suddenly wake up and feel like you’re back at day one, the bed empty beside you, sick and dizzy and heartbroken, not knowing where your husband is, knowing only he’s somewhere across town in another woman’s bed, making love to her and not you…. Yes, you’ll still feel the pain, but you won’t suffer like you used to because you’ve stripped the veneer of fear and judgment off the pain, i.e., “I shouldn’t be feeling this way at 10 months! What’s wrong with me? I’ll never get better!” Instead, you’ll just feel what you’re feeling. That’s so much easier. And, you know you’ll feel better, which starts to happen faster and faster each time through the levels.
Early on in my recovery, when I got sent back to the beginning of the game, it took me months to get back to the level where I had been killed off; then, it took weeks; then, days. Now, I can pretty much work through all of the Kübler-Ross stages in the course of an evening and still have time left over to watch an episode of Midnight Diner before bed. But the best part of this process has been that, as I started making it to the higher levels, I started to catch glimpses of the horizon beyond the spiral of recovery—of what my life was going to be like when the game was over. And it was beautiful, so much better than any view I ever had from inside my abusive marriage. That glimpse, that hope, got me back up on my feet when I got knocked down.
Nearly four years out, I don’t know if I’ve won the recovery game—or if I ever will. It’s a bit moot, honestly, because I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point I started playing a different game. I got bored of the divorcée game and its many tedious levels—the Wasteland of Discard, Paperwork Mountain, the Labyrinth of Recovery, the Swamps of Self-Doubt, etc.—and I downloaded a new one. The goal of this new game is getting to know myself and God as fully as I can. Sure, there are frustrating levels aplenty in this new game, lots of tricky puzzles, tough bosses, meandering side quests. And I have the sneaking suspicion I’ll be playing it forever. But I love it because as far as I can see in every direction, it’s all horizon.
The Rookery 