Scars Fade

I was married twenty years ago today, and was officially divorced after the second anniversary. Since 2000, this is the second, maybe third time I've remembered the anniversary, and only because I just had to write the day's date for some code I was unit testing. Usually I don't think of it until my birthday, which falls on Sunday. And two or three times in the same period I've forgotten my birthday. A lapse I could not have imagined as a child.

The last post, about entertaining the thought we may be a single spirit somehow living in and through every other person got me thinking. I remembered meeting at a mutual friend's wedding, after already having been acquainted with most of her family. I was crazy for her, and those feelings outlasted the relationship by years, which in my memory seemed to die about the same time we said "I do." I still don't understand the distant coldness I never once broke through during the marriage. I don't even know how much originated from my side. That empathetic thought yesterday urged me to reminisce more than I had since getting divorced nearly eighteen years ago. As a result I feel more at peace about that history. Not reconciled or anything artificial like that, which would not make sense nearly twenty years later.

Is it time, or maturing that when I take a moment to look at the life of the relationship the happy memories are what stand out now? Or more of the empathetic world view?