Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Working Thru It

I was really so ready for this divorce. For a long time I have been ready - emotionally disconnected and just waiting for the right time. I felt trapped for so long with young children. For years I just did what I had to do to get thru the day and pass the time. I don't regret that, for I did it for my children and to be with them as babies when I know they needed me the most.

As ready as I was and as confident in my decision as I am, it is very difficult to work thru the emotions and disappointments of a dream that never really came true. The dream of sharing my life with someone who would love me just the way I am, someone to share the joys and challenges of raising children. I am pretty sure I've known all along that this marriage was never going to be that picture I had in my mind. We all make sacrifices going into a relationship or marriage, but it's just too much to sacrifice the core of who you really are, a marriage isn't meant to be that way.

I've cried a lot of tears these last few weeks. Sometimes I don't even know why I'm crying. Simple things make me cry. My daughter telling me she loves me. Picking up my EBT/food stamps card at the DSHS office, then more tears as I used the card for the first time at Top Foods and "FOOD STAMPS" shows up on the check out screen. It's not that I'm too proud, it's that I'm angry that I was put in this position unnecessarily. Butch showed up with bags of groceries and I cried. People can't even ask me "how are you" anymore without starting a flood of tears. I think about the child who has been impacted by an absent father and I fall apart again. It doesn't take much, but the reality is that the things on my mind are very heavy things. I'm pretty sure that the constant flow of tears is a result of keeping these feelings that have weighed so heavy on my heart bottled up inside for so long. For so long I was just doing what I had to do to survive the situation.

This hurts. It hurts much more than I ever thought it would. I thought that I would just be happy to be free of an emotionally abusive and controlling relationship. I forgot that I would need to mourn the loss of the dream. The loss of the man that I truly loved with all my heart who never was and never became capable of loving me in return, for he does not love himself. I didn't think it would hurt so much trying to move past that. And even though I know that there was nothing I could have done to change him or the situation, there is that small part of me that still wonders...what could I have done differently to change him. I hope that in time even that small part of me will let go completely and I will finally be at peace with what is and what I never could have changed, no matter how hard I tried.

You can love someone with ever fiber of your being. You can give yourself to them completely. But if they are incapable of accepting that love then they will also be incapable of returning it and for me, it was at that point when I realized this that I realized I was no longer in love with my husband. My heart just had no more to give.

A quote from Maya Angelou that has come to mind quite often lately:

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them."

2 comments:

  1. ((Hugs)), Julie. You are SO much stronger than you give yourself credit for. I am so proud of you.

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  2. I agree with Mary. ((hug))

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