Early morning is me time. I can read my messages and write this journal.  I look at the things I am doing now during this time and can see the benefits of going through this painful situation.  There is irony there; that is, to really get to know myself I have to go through all of this.  I am introspective now.  I think about things that matter much more.  I am aware now.  I can see my strenghts in a way that I never saw them before.  I can look at  my marriage better and see what I was giving and getting much more clearly.  Most of those things bring me comfort.  For example, my wife is not in contact with either of our children at the moment.  She fought with my daughter and my daughter said, that the wife had never apologized to her.  As an adult and a parent, I can see how the children in a divorce situation are the innocent victims and need to be cared for.  I am able to step up and be a great father to my kids.  I am reaping the benefits of a closer relationship with both of them.  They value me in a way that perhaps they didn't have to see before.  In all things there is a good and a bad side, winning the lottery, getting fired from a job, starting a new relationship, or even going through a divorce.I have a clearer awareness of what kind of a man I am, and as my fiftieth birthday is in two months it is about time.  I value honor and honesty and can say that I live my life with both of those in mind.  I speak my mind and deal in an upfront way with the people I encounter.  There of course is a downside to those qualities but they work for me.  I like the man that I have become.  I can feel myself, very slowly, growing stronger in the midst of the wreckage.  Lyn changed her screen name to the Phoenix and indeed that is what I hope for all of us, to rise out of our ashes and become healthy.  Now that I have months away from the intense pain I can start to breathe a litte.  I miss having a woman in my life and my arms but I hope to never again give so much of me to another person.  It is not healthy.  I can't let my caretaking impulses, which have such a good side to them, swallow my self taking impulses.  There has to be greater awareness.  Another thing I have seen about myself is that I am open to growth and change.  Once I am aware of something I have a chance to change it.  I am grateful for that chance.  I still miss my wife, or the wife that I can see in my mind's eye.  The woman that she is today; I don't miss.  I couldnt' give up what I have gotten from this process, the growth, the self awareness, the reducded anxiety, the self love (not in that way, dang), that I have gotten.  This journal is just too wonderific for my tastes.  It is too syrupy sweet.  My therapist told me that the upcoming year will be a hard one.  It won't be as dramatic as last year, with the explosions and the searing pain, but one of lots of slow work involving hammering out a divorce agreement, preparing a house to sell and selling it, moving and beginning construction of a new life.  Just today, that doesn't seem that daunting as I feel stronger than I have felt for years. Just today.