During this time, I couldn’t trust the extent of my reactions. For instance, when first separated from a marriage of twenty years, some of my closest friends exiled me. One couple in particular was reminiscent of my parents. One partner was vocal and maintained the foreground, while the other was somewhat reticent, adaptive in the background. When they spurned me, I was deeply hurt. The more vocal of the two took the lead, but I became enraged more deeply with the reticent partner. Though I was wounded, I felt that my reaction was out of proportion to what happened. Over time, I realized I was angry that the reticent partner didn’t voice her own feelings or take her own stand in all of this.

Slowly, it became clear that she reminded me of my own reticence over the years. I was angry at myself as well. It also became clear that she was hiding behind her partner, the way my father always hid behind my domineering mother. Even when my parents would write, my mother would speak for both of them and even sign his name. Through the rejection of my friends, I was finally ex-pressing the legacy of hurt from all those years of my father never taking a stand or voicing his love directly, as well as the pain of my own silence along the way.

When another lifelong friend balked at helping me move for fear of offending my former wife, I felt discarded. Finally, after several months, I told him how I felt. It was awkward, and we both were afraid how this would affect our friendship. I realized, only later, that I was looking for him to say he was sorry, which he did, though not using those words. I was angry with him, again somewhat out of proportion to what happened. It came to me later that in all my years on Earth, I’ve never heard my mother say she is sorry for anything. Not once.

Through what my friends incurred and what they happened to trigger within me, I released a great deal of shadow buildup and the callous around my inner heart became more porous. These are just two examples of a myriad of de-pressed feelings I’ve carried since childhood that I am still in the process of releasing. Miraculously, yet not surprisingly, I am finding that, on the other side of giving voice to these pains, I am closer to my skin, closer to the air I breathe, closer to the words I speak and hear, closer to tears than ever. The water within is more on the surface.