I had relentlessly clung to a first marriage that was deeply wounded. I had clung to routines and habits of thought. To guide my behavior, I had clung to highly defined personal roles. It struck me that I had clung to all these things because they had given me a profound sense of permanence, of something I could "keep." Perhaps I had clung to my roles as father and son for the same reason, because they anchored both my mother and my sons to me, made it impossible for them to drift away. In a sense, I had devoted my life to finding strategies by which I could hold things forever and keep them
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