The art of being strangers......

I had another moment in this that made me realize how deeply my ex and I are strangers...the word stranger is a person you don't know, or are unfamiliar with.....and on the way home from Lancaster the kids wanted to call their dad.....Mads was having trouble getting into her Disney app, and she called her dad to help since he pays for it.....and so he was on speaker for awhile.....and listening to him talk.....and the kids talk with him.....there was no recognition in him for me.......and I was marveling at it......again...... the notion of how you can spend so much time with a person.....20 years in fact....and they can become unfamiliar to you in every way....and I wondered if it was because I have changed so much?? Or because he has? Or because we both have?.....there was nothing in his voice or in anything he said that felt recognizable.....and how crazy is that really?? I guess it never gets less crazy, or shocking, or surprising to me that this is where we have ended up.....and maybe everybody that gets divorced, no matter the extent of the estrangement feels that stranger piece?? Maybe.....maybe once the married connection is severed.....there is a disconnect that is there....and I guess it got me thinking too, due to my friendship that recently ended.....and thinking of what binds people, and connects them.....and what breaks that connection.....I suppose it is energy....energy drives everything.....and so the energy that connects us to a person....or the energy that makes things suddenly strange is what fascinates me......so as I sat and listened to the father of my children.....speaking to my children.....without my recognizing him at all.....and it all hit me.....again.....the wondering....wondering what he thinks about it all....like really thinks about it all....my forever wondering his version of our story....the one he carries in his heart and soul.....and I know it doesn't really matter.....but it kinda does I guess...two decades of my life........spent with him.....the way he holds our marriage in his mind.....being something I wish I knew sometimes....back to wondering if we will ever speak of it....shrink the elephant.....or if the elephant will just continue to grow and grow......hard to say.....so it is still strange to me that we are strangers....still.....not all the time....but every once in awhile.....and I wonder if it is strange to him too sometimes....