Between the years 2015 and 2024, I haven’t made a whole lot of noise.
I hardly said a word about my first published book.
I stopped drawing, painting, and writing.
I even shut down my old website — bryanbeus.com.
There is a big reason why.
Everything can be summed up with a simple word: divorce.
What An Awful Word
Divorce.
The very pronunciation sounds like I’m splitting the word into pieces as I say it.
Divorce.
One of my teachers at Brigham Young University did a personal illustration for herself in which she painted how the divorce of her parents felt for her.
She took a dozen family photos, cut out the faces, and placed some on one side of the canvas and some on the other, and placed several more faces ambiguously around the edges.
Between the two clusters of faces, she painted a black sea, and coming out of the sea was a giant, white, tiger shark.
Like a leviathan, the monstrous creature gnashed to smithereens those family members who were closest to the event, and sent the rest swirling away.
I can remember her speaking candidly about how divorce is this fiend that everyone knows is there, but no one sees until it is rushing out of the darkness and nothing is safe.
Only once the damage is done do we find out who was hurt.
Divorce.
Dih – voar – suh.
Sigh.
What a tragedy.
A Brief History of the Marriage
In 2015, my wife and I married.
In 2023, my wife and I divorced.
Between those two dates, we brought two beautiful children into the world, and I am so grateful.
The marriage is over.
My sweet grandmother, who has been so kind to listen to me through this years-long event, helped me summarize the ill-fated union between my ex-wife and me as follows:
We both tried.
Not Knowing What to Say
As I look back at why I allowed my voice to fall silent during those eight years, there are dozens of reasons.
Yes, there were health concerns, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere.
However, after having overcome those challenges, I still did not raise my artistic voice again.
One of the most salient purposes for my silence was simply that I worried, or even knew, deep down, that I might say something foolish, or hurtful.
My heart is healing, and now I can say this:
I hope my ex-wife can find happiness.