Success has a funny way of hiding problems.
As long as one part of your life is going well, it's easy to ignore what is happening everywhere else.
Professionally, I was doing better than I ever had.
The Modem Programming Tool was a success.
People were using it.
Management knew my name.
I was building things that mattered.
At home, things were moving in a different direction.
Looking back, I can see the signs.
At the time, I either missed them or chose not to see them.
My wife was spending more and more time at work.
She managed the office for a company that serviced fire extinguishers.
The hours grew longer.
The phone calls grew longer too.
I knew who she was talking to.
A married man from work.
The conversations sometimes lasted for hours.
I noticed.
I just didn't do much about it.
Part of me trusted her.
Part of me didn't want to seem jealous.
The biggest part of me was distracted.
If I wasn't working, I was usually sitting in front of a computer.
Writing code.
Playing World of Warcraft.
Escaping into problems that seemed easier to solve than the ones waiting in the next room.
What started as a game had become an obsession.
Entire evenings disappeared.
Weekends disappeared.
I would sit down planning to play for an hour and suddenly discover it was after midnight.
But World of Warcraft wasn't all bad.
In fact, some of my favorite memories from that period came from it.
Somewhere along the way I started finding family members inside the game.
First one.
Then another.
Then another.
Before long I was spending evenings online with people I hadn't spent that much time with in years.
Eric.
Mike.
Amy.
Ben.
Glen.
Others too.
The game became a strange kind of family reunion.
We talked.
We laughed.
We explored virtual worlds together while living hundreds of miles apart in the real one.
Sometimes Christian joined us.
Looking back, those may be some of my favorite memories.
For a few hours every night, the miles disappeared.
Family was together again.
The game wasn't really the important part.
The people were.
The irony wasn't obvious to me then.
While I was reconnecting with family online, I was growing more distant from the person living in the same house.
The strange thing is that I don't remember a huge fight.
No screaming.
No dishes breaking.
No dramatic moment where everything exploded.
The marriage didn't end that way.
It ended quietly.
Painfully.
But quietly.
I was still trying to save the marriage.
She wasn't.
Looking back, I think we were having completely different conversations.
I was trying to figure out how to repair what was broken.
She was trying to figure out how to move on.
At some point the discussions shifted.
They weren't about fixing things anymore.
They became discussions about separation.
Who would stay.
Who would leave.
What came next.
I didn't want those conversations.
I wanted another chance.
I wanted more time.
I wanted a different ending.
Instead, I got reality.
One day she asked me to leave.
I wish I could tell you there was some dramatic moment attached to it.
There wasn't.
Just a simple truth neither of us could avoid anymore.
This wasn't working.
The marriage was over.
The paperwork just hadn't caught up yet.
I was broken.
Not angry.
Not screaming.
Just broken.
The hardest part was that I knew exactly what was waiting for me.
I had already lived through one divorce.
I knew the loneliness.
I knew the uncertainty.
I knew the nights spent staring at a ceiling wondering how everything had gone so wrong.
I knew the feeling of watching a life disappear piece by piece.
Years earlier I had begged someone to stay.
I had spent countless hours trying to save a marriage that didn't want to be saved.
This time I didn't.
Not because I didn't love her.
Not because I wasn't hurting.
Because experience had taught me something painful.
You cannot negotiate with someone who has already left emotionally.
You cannot love enough for two people.
You cannot repair a relationship by yourself.
I cried.
I mourned.
I hurt.
But I didn't beg.
Somewhere deep inside I already knew it was over.
I just wasn't ready to accept what came next.
I remember sitting there trying to process it all.
Where would I live?
What would happen next?
Should I stay in Texas?
Should I go back to Michigan?
Had I failed?
Had we both failed?
The questions came faster than the answers.
In the end, I did the only thing that made sense.
I packed what I could fit into my car.
Clothes.
Personal belongings.
The things that mattered most.
I called work and took some time off.
The truth is that I wasn't sure when I would be back.
Or if I would be back.
Part of me believed I was leaving Texas for good.
Maybe I would stay in Michigan.
Maybe I would find a new job.
Maybe I would start over.
I didn't have a plan.
I just knew I couldn't stay where I was.
So I loaded everything into my car.
Started the engine.
Pointed the car north.
And started driving.