Loving and letting go

Throughout this past month, I kept updating my opinion on what was the “hardest part”.  First it was when you were in the coma, then it was when I found those text messages, then it was all the medical complications, then it was the week you woke up and struggled with sedation, then it was the day I had to tell you I knew the truth and our relationship was over, then it was the days afterward when I did not hear from you or see you.  But now that it is “over”, I know without a doubt the past 24 hours were the hardest part.

I knew when you were discharged from the hospital you would be coming to the house, both to see the dog and to get your belongings I packed for you.  I was so anxious…I had no idea what was going to happen.  You could have literally picked everything up and left in ten minutes.  The minute you walked in the door, all my anxiety melted away.  You looked so feeble and weak, moving so slowly.  You hugged me and my face pressed against your neck, just like it did the other day, except this time it was your skin and not your central line I felt.  All I wanted was to be with you and take care of you.  I know those feelings were supposed to be “wrong”, but throughout this whole nightmare, I have followed my heart with no regrets.  I knew you needed me more than I needed to be angry with you.  I can say it is the first time in my life that I know I had to be and was completely selfless.  Nothing mattered more than you surviving and getting better.

You staying overnight just felt natural.  I thought it would be awkward, but it wasn’t.  Even though it was maybe not the smartest move in the world for us, it just felt right.  I think we held each other more in 24 hours than we did in the entire previous year.  We have both always wanted our space in bed when sleeping, but I don’t think there was a time the entire night that we didn’t touch each other.  It was not sexual at all, it was just so comforting.  I woke up before you and just stared at your face.  I wanted to memorize every single thing, to burn the image into my brain.  I have always loved your nose and the shape of your lips.  My favorite part of your face is under you eyes by the bridge of your nose.

My heart sank when your parents arrived an hour early- I felt robbed of 60 more minutes of being with you, of us being together.  That last hour was so rushed.  I made sure to take some time to take the dog into the other room alone so I could say goodbye to her.  Every time I walk into the house now, it feels so weird to not have her there by the door.  I kept thinking today I needed to run home to let her out and then would remember with a sinking heart that she was no longer there.  I don’t know how I managed to say goodbye to you without collapsing.  I had to lie on the bed after I came back inside the house.  Your car was still in front of the house.  My tears were silent so I could hear the exact moment you drove away.  It reminded me of when we were dating long distance and you would leave at the end of the weekend and I would feel my heart sink knowing I would not see you for a full week.  This was that times one million.

I am aware of the fact that I am mourning our relationship and focusing only on the things I will miss.  I will miss you so much.  I start to feel normal, forget for one split second, and then it is like a wave washes over me and I remember you are gone.  Really, really gone.  I realize right now that I am only thinking about the good parts of our relationship and the fact that you are a truly a good person with a very bad problem. I know that I am going to have to go through all the different emotions at some point.  I deserve to feel the anger about your betrayal.  There’s a part of me that is relieved that my life will not be affected every day by your drinking.  I wish I had a crystal ball to see into the future- to see if you are going to be sober, to find out if you will be a part of my life again.  However, I know with complete certainty that I love you, and yet I also know with equal confidence that I had to let you go.  For you and for me.

I haven’t even begun to process the trauma, the hurt, the heartbreak, the loss from this past month.  I tried to stay busy all day so I didn’t think about how every minute, you were another mile farther away.  We talked on the phone and at the end of the conversation you said “I love you” and I said “I love you, too”.  It did not feel like simply habit, although we always said that when we hung up the phone.  I know the love we have for each other is genuine and I am not going to deny my feelings for you because of the negative things that have happened.  I just know that love is not enough and some things are just not meant to be.  I am letting you go because this is a journey you have to take yourself and I need to carve a new path for myself, too.  I spend too much time wishing that none of this ever happened and torturing myself about what I could have done differently.  But deep down, I knew that my love would never be enough and that you have to learn to love yourself first.  And I have to start putting myself first and that begins with letting you go.

Thankful…

Things have been a little crazy lately.  My boyfriend and I definitely hit a rough patch and the holidays are always a little stressful.  On top of that, I am traveling to D.C. next week, which is triggering A LOT of travel anxiety.  It is so easy to get disheartened by the negative things, but I am really making an effort to look at the positive things in life.  My friend is having a baby girl, my dad is still doing pretty well, I have really nice students this year, things with my boyfriend are looking up.  I do have a lot to be thankful for this year.

Over this past weekend, I met a girl at a party.  We had talked very briefly once before, we are about the same age and I knew she was a teacher, so I figured we had some things in common.  We ended up talking in the corner for over an hour and I confided things in her that I normally would never tell a stranger- she also is divorced, so she understood things that many other people do not in my life.  She was so sweet and easy to talk to and we had a very similar history as far as the timeline of our marriages and divorces go.  This girl is now engaged (her fiancé is actually my boyfriend’s best friend’s good friend, which is how I happened to meet her).  It really surprised me how open I was with her.  I guess at this point I don’t have anything to hide and I am not ashamed by anything that I have experienced.  It was just really nice to talk to someone with a different perspective, who could still really relate to my life.  The only thing that made me kind of upset was how excited she is to get married again and how happy she kept saying she is.  I don’t know if I really feel that way…I mean, I don’t know if I would ever want to get married again and the fact that she is so eager to marry her fiancé made me question whether I would want to get married if I was with “the right person”.  I’m not saying my boyfriend isn’t that person- he is so supportive of me, but we definitely have problems and her relationship just seems…easy.  Now I have definitely learned not to take other people’s lives and relationships at face value, but she genuinely seemed so happy and in love and kept saying what a nice guy her fiancé is.  I feel like I was so traumatized by my divorce that I don’t know if I would ever risk having to go through that again.  But one thing we both said is that we both saw red flags going into our first marriages (and ignored them, obviously).  She clearly sees no red flags now with her new husband, but I feel like I see some in my relationship now that would make me a little hesitant to make that commitment again.  Meeting her just made me think about how much my life has changed in the past ten years and how I really don’t know what is going to happen and maybe I just have to be okay with that right now.  I mean, I never, ever thought my father would go this long without drinking, so it just goes to show you that life has a way of throwing curveballs.

So, I am going focus on being thankful this Thanksgiving.  Instead of being too scared to travel, I am going to try to remember how lucky I am to be able to go to D.C. with my boyfriend (who I know will help me get through my anxiety to get there) and his family, who has embraced me in so many ways.

The good, the bad and the ugly

So, it has now been almost two months since my boyfriend moved in. The first two weeks were awful, then things seemed to settle down for a couple weeks and were good, but now they are back to being worse than ever. I actually think we maybe broke up last night. I am not sure how that works considering he lives at my house now. So the first two weeks of our cohabitation were bad, the second two were pretty good and now things are downright ugly.

I think it boils down to he does not like his job and he is really depressed. He is prone to depression anyway, but I have never seen the ripple effect like this. He basically acts like he can’t stand me and tells me everything is my fault, but then says he is depressed and I need to stop making it about me. His actions are directly affecting me!! One big thing in addition to our constant bickering is that there is literally no physical affection in our relationship. Forget doing “it”, he acts like I have a disease if I try to touch him at all. I feel so resentful towards him right now because I feel like he totally changed once he moved in. I really did try to be patient (at least I did once I realized just how stressed out he was after moving and changing jobs), but this is getting ridiculous and is causing so much anxiety for me. He is cranky and nasty and we don’t have any fun together anymore, let alone actually talk about anything important (or even just lighthearted conversations). I have dealt with situational depression before and went off all my medication in December and now I am a crying, hot mess.

I don’t know if I should give up and just tell him he needs to move out. I don’t know if his feelings towards me have changed, but at this point it doesn’t really matter because he acts like they have. How many times can I try to talk to him when he is just shutting me out? I know it hasn’t been long and the transition is way harder than I thought it would be, so does it just need more time?

**Disclaimer: I am obviously not perfect…I do things that cause arguments, too and I know I have become even more sensitive and defensive lately. But I know that I am not mean to him like he is to me. I really do want to make him happy and I know I have put in a lot more effort into our relationship over these past few weeks than he has.

ps- totally different topic, but my father started smoking again and I am pretty sure he is also drinking (backstory: alcoholic for 25 years, had stroke, forced to get clean, was for 5 months, got doctor’s clearance to drive and is a nasty jerk again). I feel like I can’t even talk to my boyfriend about this and I am having a hard time talking to my friends about my boyfriend situation- I feel like I am “that girl”…they were all so supportive during my divorce and now I am having very similar relationship problems again and it is very embarrassing.

I feel really alone.

Transitioning..

So it has been three weeks since my boyfriend moved in…and the first two weeks were really, really hard. I was expecting it to be a bit of a transition and knew that he would have additional stress from beginning his new job, but I did not expect it to be so bad! We fought so much and he was pretty unbearable. I really tried to be supportive, but after a few days of constant tension and arguing, I became very stressed too, which negatively influenced my behavior. I think he was having trouble adjusting to living in my house and feeling like I was on top of him constantly and I was freaking out being afraid that I was repeating the living situation that I had with my ex-husband. Thank goodness that past week or so has been the complete opposite and now things have settled down and are so much better. I am so relieved because I really was starting to think that we made a horrible mistake moving in together. Luckily, I have my therapist on speed dial and made a rare emergency appointment. She helped me see things from his perspective and although she agreed that he didn’t have the right to be so nasty to me, she made me understand what he was feeling. He and I had a long talk (several of them, actually) and now things are back on track and we are enjoying having more time together. He actually acclimated really quickly to his new job and seems to really like it, which has made a huge difference in his attitude and behavior. I also am trying to be more conscientious about how I act about my house and him having space and feeling comfortable so we are both really trying and the results are noticeable.

My biggest fear is feeling trapped again. When I was married and living with my ex-husband, it seemed like I was never going to be able to get out of that situation. It took a long time to feel “free” again after my divorce and the couple of weeks that were so horrible with my new “roommate” (lol) brought back all of those feelings. I am not really opposed to marriage- my grandparents were married for 68 years!- but I feel like I could never go through that nightmare again and never want to feel trapped like that again. Although sometimes I think getting married again could be nice- and hopefully very different- I really believe the only way I can ever prevent getting into that position again (or getting divorced again) would be to never get married again. Living with my boyfriend reminds me of all the things I really liked about being married, but I don’t know if I could ever get over my fear and anxiety about it. It’s not like he is pressuring me, so it is not something I need to worry about right now, but I do still think about it. For now, I am able to enjoy being able to see my boyfriend every day and being able to go to sleep together every night (we were long distance for several years)…so I guess I will try to live in the moment!!

Wondering…do some people just deserve more?

I’m at a cross-roads in my current relationship and it has me thinking about all of my prior relationships in general. I have written previously about my (bad) habit of comparing myself to other people and I do this a lot when it comes to couples. I have two really good girlfriends who are very happily married- both for the second time. Both of them have husbands who treat them wonderfully. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t have a guy that looks at me and treats me the way their husbands do. I do know that no relationship is what it necessarily appears to be from an outsider’s perspective and that every couple has their issues and problems.

I was talking to an older, male, happily married coworker who I have become close with. He is father-figurely…and he knows my two girlfriends mentioned above well, too. I said something to him today that kind of took me by surprise. I said something along the lines of “maybe I don’t deserve what they have.” I didn’t say it with intent or in a “poor me” kind of way…I literally said it without thinking, which is why it is bothering me.

I intrinsically know that I am a good person who deserves to be treated well (and I am not saying that my current boyfriend is not good to me- we are just having a lot of problems at the moment and he can be mean at times). But there is a little, damaged part of me that does believe that I am not 100% worthy. I do not like to blame my behaviors or issues on other people, but I know that these feelings about myself stem from my alcoholic father and mentally abusive ex-husband.

But, I also know that a lot of how I feel comes from my own choices and I could have made better ones throughout my life so far. This blog is more of a stream of consciousness, so excuse my musings, but sometimes I just wonder why I feel that way about myself, yet I think that my sister and my friends deserve to be treated like queens???

Ps- I wasn’t going to post this bc I usually edit what I write a lot more, but the whole reason I started this blog was to be honest- with others and myself.

Till death do us part

Growing up with an alcoholic father and an enabling mother, I clearly did not see a very positive example of a marriage growing up. Arguing, threats and violence was the norm in our house, although I do remember my parents sharing genuine affection before my dad’s addiction took over. When she was 7 years old, my sister told my mom all she wanted for Christmas was for them to get a divorce. That makes me so sad now.

I would be lying (to you and to myself) if I said I did not have reservations about getting married while I was planning my wedding. I was not scared of getting married per se, but I had seen a lot of red flags in my husband’s behavior that I ignored (that’s another story). My exhusband just annulled our marriage (I got the final letter this past weekend). At first, I fought the annulment- we were married for 4 1/2 years and the grounds he used were outright lies. Neither of us are religious, so it seemed very hypocritical that he was pursuing an annulment, although it is clearly because he wants to remarry in the church. I was very upset at first, but I finally decided that no one (not even God) could say that our marriage is invalid. Regardless it was an unpleasant experience.

I do not think I will ever get married again because I felt so trapped in my marriage at the end. But, the ironic thing is that I truly do still believe in the beauty of marriage. My mother’s parents, my Mama and Papa, were married for 68 years (and together for a total of 72). I am not saying their marriage did not face trials and difficult times, but they were the most inspirational example of true love I have ever seen. After more than 65 years of marriage, my grandfather still kissed my grandmother goodbye when he left the house and before he went to bed every single night. They were so loving towards each other. My marriage might have failed, but I will always believe in marriage because of my Mama and Papa. They were my favorite people in the world and I learned so much about life, teaching and love from them. I could tell my Mama anything, sometimes things I wouldn’t even tell my best girlfriends. I was so anxious to tell them I was getting a divorce because I didn’t want to disappoint them. When I finally worked up the courage to call and tell them, my Mama immediately said she was glad because she knew I wasn’t happy and I heard my Papa in the background yell out “he’s a prick” (you would find this much funnier if you knew what a gentleman my grandfather was). They were just the best and at 93 and 92 respectively, Mama and Papa still lived in their home, drove around town and were pretty healthy for their ages.

In October of 2009, my Mama passed away while taking a nap in her bed. She kissed my grandfather, went to lie down and died peacefully. After she died, my grandfather literally could not survive without her. Within 40 days of her death, he passed away. He went from being a relatively healthy to being on hospice care within a month. Once his beloved wife was gone, he lost the will to live and he starved himself to death. It is so heartbreaking and I miss them every single day. But there is something so romantic and beautiful about their story. My grandfather died from a broken heart. I had heard of that before but never really believed that it was a real thing. Their love was so strong and their marriage was an inspiration to everyone who was lucky enough to know them.

I filed for divorce in November of 2009. Even though my exhusband and I were trying to reconcile when my Mama passed away, it is reassuring to know she supported my decision to leave him. Those few months were the worst of my life and losing my grandparents while going through a divorce was incredibly painful. I often wished that I could just call my grandmother one more time. Even three years later, I miss them so damn much. But I also know how lucky I am- not only to have had such amazing grandparents up until I was in my 30s- but also to be a part of their love story.