Are you with me so far?

I’ve jumped around a bit since starting this Substack a little over a year ago.

I started with my first divorce and then moved forward until the narrative got uncomfortably close to the present day, then jumped back in time to my childhood. I moved forward again until I reached my starting point—where my life began to fall apart. The only thing that remains is to relate the events of the past year.

I had hoped that by the time I reached this point I would be able to relate them coherently and honestly—preferably without having a mental breakdown somewhere in South America. I’m still not 100% sure I’m there yet, but I’ve decided to go ahead anyway. By the time I’m done, I think you will understand both my reticence and my decision to forge ahead.

Because of the convoluted way I’ve told my story, I wanted to start with a recap of narrative so far. Feel free to skip the rest of this post if you already know this part, but it does provide some important context for the stuff that comes later.

As a child, I was recognized early as unusually intelligent and imaginative, but I was also absent-minded, socially awkward, and completely unsuited to repetitive tasks like schoolwork. I understood concepts quickly but lost assignments, forgot deadlines, and earned grades that bore little relation to my abilities. My father responded to these failures with criticism and ridicule, frequently treating me as lazy, irresponsible, or stupid. I learned to assume that whatever potential other people saw in me would remain unrealized. I struggled with deep depression and thoughts of hopelessness and suicide.

That pattern continued into adulthood. I barely graduated from Calvin College with a philosophy degree and spent the next several years cycling through menial jobs for which I was temperamentally ill-suited. I was bad at following routines, dealing with customers, and pretending to respect petty authority. I was repeatedly fired or quit in frustration. I had vague ambitions to become a writer, but nothing in my early academic or employment history suggested that I would ever build a stable career, much less become successful at anything.

I married my college girlfriend Julia in 1993, and we moved to central California. I eventually talked my way into a technical-support job in the East San Francisco Bay area despite having little formal computer knowledge. My ability to understand systems and solve unusual problems allowed me to build a career in software. Julia and I had two children, Willem and Madeline. I worked constantly, bought property, renovated and built houses, and eventually started writing novels while still working more than sixty hours a week.

The contrast with my earlier life was dramatic. The absent-minded kid who had been called feeble-minded and the young man who could not keep a grocery-store job was now earning a professional salary, supporting a family, designing and building a house, and developing complex software. I had finally become conventionally successful. But I remained driven by the fear that everything could collapse if I stopped moving, and the same anxiety that powered my accomplishments made it difficult for me to slow down, listen, or share control.

From my perspective, I was doing everything necessary to provide for my family. From Julia’s perspective, I was making major decisions and dragging her along without treating her as an equal partner. She became passive and resentful; I became angry that she was not helping. Neither of us understood the other, and our marriage deteriorated through years of poor communication and accumulating grievances.
Meanwhile, my writing career showed signs of promise. I self-published Mercury Falls, which sold well enough to attract Amazon Publishing. They re-published Mercury Falls under their imprint and then published two sequels. I began to believe I might be able to leave software development behind. Julia seemed almost resentful of my success, so I had no one to share it with.

Eventually Julia maneuvered me into raising the subject of divorce, although I later understood that she probably wanted me to reject the idea and prove that I was committed to her. Instead, exhausted and lonely, I agreed. I felt immediate relief, which only made her angrier. Looking back, I accept that whatever her failures were, I was not strong or emotionally capable enough to hold the marriage together.