The man whose interests are all outside is never satisfied with what is necessary, but is perpetually hankering after something more and better which, true to his bias, he always seeks outside himself. He forgets completely that, for all his outward successes, he himself remains the same inwardly, and he therefore laments his poverty if he possesses only one automobile when the majority have two.

Around the age of thirty something in me began to change. The alteration was chronic and somehow concealed from me. Identifying it in retrospect is challenging because the memories are hazy. The details are not as clear as the emotions. But although their interpretations change, feelings rarely disappear.

The first phase started with three consecutive nights in the tub, crying. I was unemployed after being laid off a few weeks before, and living in the house I closed on the day after losing my job. At the time I thought my problem was the stress of debt and an uncertain future. There I was in 2002, a professional engineer five years out of college and no better off than 1979 when I was eight and scrounging for some pennies around the house, wanting to buy a single package of Kool Aid.

Money wasn’t the issue. It was only a temporary problem solved with a new job in Chicago.

My evolution manifest as divorce ten years later. That I blamed her was a symptom of immaturity. Instead of gaining agency over my life, the coming solitude was a nightmare. So was admiting I was wrong from the start. I cried alone for three months straight while contemplating the emptiness.

Five more years passed before I began to piece together the story so I could comprehend what was happening to me. By then I was no longer alone because She came into my life. I like to think it was only through our collective isolation that my fifteen year-long transition became apparent, but who knows. Maybe insight just happens.