As sure as my name is Ainsley Addison, I suspect I will live and die the life of a lonely man. Even my mother must have known, for my name is Scottish for “alone.” Not that I don’t deserve it, because maybe I do. I have come to peace with it, but it is not my choice.
The Good Book says “it is not good for a man to be alone.” For most of my adult life I wasn’t. I was married and happy with a job, two kids, and a home. I did all the things a good, upstanding Christian man should do.
Yet, all good things end, whether by choice or fate. For me, it ended sooner than later. I didn’t want a divorce. I didn’t want the separation from my son and daughter, two vulnerable teenagers who needed their dad more than ever. I didn’t want to live alone.
But such is life. Bad things happen to good people. Not that I was especially good—I was average at least—but no better or worse than most.
She said “I love you,” then in the next breath “but I’m not in love with you.” What does that even mean? How could my wife love me, yet no longer be in love enough to want me as her husband anymore? Relegated to little more than a weekend daddy, giver of gifts and a prop for events and photos.
“It’s for the best,” she assured me. “Kids are resilient,” she said, “they bounce back.” I could be the “fun dad” who gets my kids every other weekend, then returns them home, with no further worries the rest of the week. Reduced to a visitor in my children’s lives—welcomed for a few days, then expected to leave until my next go-around.
No, it is not good for a man to be alone. Adam, with the whole world his kingdom to rule and enjoy, was still lonely and alone. The empty, aching space inside him yearned for more.
And then there was Eve, for the rest of his life.
My Eve left me for the rest of my life. When she left, I felt sawn in two, one half fading into the mist, the other half thrown into the flames of rejection.
So here I am, in silent contemplation–sad, lonely and alone. Alone by myself; alone in a crowd. Crushing, suffocating aloneness that sucks the joy of life from my bones.
I will survive. I will overcome. I will live, forever carrying the scars of rejection and loss, remembering what was, and what might have been.
