In November, my wife asked me to move out.

It was a surprise – an unwelcome one, for sure – but maybe it shouldn’t have been. Our relationship had been on unstable ground for several years. For now I’ll spare you the deep dive into the many factors leading up to this development. I won’t even talk about who’s responsible for it. (Spoiler: We both are, perhaps equally.) For now I’ll give you the absolute basics, with the promise of future posts that will examine the path my life has taken, the various factors that have led me to this point, and what exactly “this point” is.

You’ve read the title of this post. Perhaps you are aware that The Obsolete Man is a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone starring Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver. One of several effective exposes of fascism broadcast during the show’s five-year run, the episode depicts a totalitarian society whose members are executed when the state determines they no longer serve a purpose.

At the risk of coming across as melodramatic or emotionally manipulative, lately “obsolete” describes my feelings about myself. Or, more accurately, it describes the way I believe I am perceived by others, specifically those who know me well. In the long stretch between moments of clarity, it feels as though I was discarded once my purpose was fulfilled. Like Burgess Meredith’s librarian in a society that has outlawed books, I was deemed obsolete. And I may not have been sentenced to death, but there are times when it feels like I might as well have been. Again, I’m not trying to be melodramatic here.

However, sometimes I feel this way during moments of clarity, and that’s really unsettling. To be clear, I do believe I still have value, though I can’t begin to imagine what that value actually is; for years, the only tangible purpose I feel I’ve had has been to be a husband to my wife and a father to my daughter. That’s it. (This will be expounded upon in an upcoming post.)

I’m sure I can still serve a purpose, though I don’t believe I am serving much of one at the moment. I will gloss over the fact that no human being should feel obligated to identify their purpose to another human being or otherwise justify their existence; my difficulty in accepting that I am allowed to simply exist without self-recrimination is something I’ll probably address in the future as well.

My life isn’t great at the moment. In fact, this is probably the worst it’s ever been, and while I’d love to say with confidence that it won’t get any worse than this, I can’t do that. But I’ve got hope.

For now, I’m going to leave it at this. But there’s more to come.

-Jack