~Moving on From Pain To Love and Forgiveness~
I have tried to hide my feelings regarding my separation from my husband so much that I've forgotten that part of moving on is the ability to bury and also grieve for its end. It is a death, a loss, a very sad and heart-breaking change in my life. Even though I know that its the best for me and my life, my husband was in my life for almost two decades. Even my very understanding and wonderful boyfriend has told me that I need to deal with all this. He has welcomed my pain and my tears but I was too foolish to let it out and finally set it free more because I didn't want to believe the pain existed...Yet, who could expect themselves to move on into a new world, happy and free of the pain of the past if they never said goodbye to it, never put it to rest? This is no different. Its time to grieve and to cry for this death.
So, here goes.All the turmoil, hurt, questions and all else...
My letter to my soon to be Ex-husband~
14 years ago I stood before you and said I loved you and married you. You looked into my eyes and promised me that you would love, honor and care for me till your last breath. I carried both our children, even helped to raise the son you had from your first marriage never complaining even when I was doing all the raising and you were doing anything and everything else and never around. I swear with all my heart that every single day I woke up, I put all the love and passion I could find into my life with you. I did everything you wanted, responded to all of your needs and even let you take out all your anger on me. I never asked for anything from you except love. I was NOT perfect but I was-(I am) human. I have needs. I wanted to feel that connection to you that we had for a mere few months. I wanted to be able to break down your thick and very tall walls that you built around yourself and help to free you from your own pain. Yet you almost never spoke to me from that place in your heart, you never let down your walls for even a second, but instead you kept me as far away from you as anyone else.
I was so lonely for almost our entire 17 years that we were together. There were times though that we would play, have fun and laugh. In those moments between your smiles, I thought I might just have finally broke through to meet the real you...But I was wrong. Time after time you would reset your walls thicker and stronger. I truly believed the entire time that it was my fault that you were that way...That if I were a better wife you might have let me in close to you. I always felt like I was a failure, like you were not at all happy because your smile was so hard sometimes to find. And when you pushed me away literally and figuratively, I would let you...Then I would go off into a depression because I feared I was the problem.
To spite the loneliness and the feelings of having to hide my true needs from you because showing them meant arguing, I stayed true to you. I never followed my heart even when I had packed my bags and even packed the kids up. I felt like if I left you I would do more damage, that I would hurt you and, honestly, that I would fail on my own. For so long my identity was "Wife", "Mommy", "Maid" and there was no room for "Stacy", "writer" or even for me to jump into a job because every single time I tried to, you would find a way to get me to quit, to call me home and to make your own needs more important than mine. It got so bad that I never felt like I could go out alone even to be with a friend. I felt like if I did I was abandoning the kids, that you would be miserable home alone with them and that in the end the fun wouldn't be worth the problems I would come home to. That feeling came easily since it was exactly what you wanted me to believe...Why did you do that? Why did you let me go out, fight for a job, work hard for a few months arguing against even my own guilt over not being home where I was made to feel like I belonged, only to make it so damn hard for me to stay working? The time our son swallowed the quarter, I was one day into a new job and had to rush home then quit the job so I could wait on our son to pass the darn thing. As if I didn't already feel the tug to be home, I didn't also need your judgmental statements and your excuses why I should stay home and lose my job....Even when you were unemployed your needs and responsibilities were more important than mine. Why was your job, your work, your income, your needs, always so much more important than mine. You would tell me I didn't make enough, work hard enough...That no job I had was as important as yours. Even my last job, when I felt so proud of myself for being in charge of a program, you found a way to degrade and put down. And why didn't you give a crap about my writing? Strangers read my words, friends and family put time into reading my poetry, but my own husband didn't even know how to locate my blog or my poems. If the man who "loves" me isn't interested in my passion to write then why would I feel like anything I said or wrote was worthy of anyone?
Why when the man who raped me 15 years earlier came into our home to do work, did you not at least understand the torture and pain I felt? Why couldn't you try at least to fake sympathy for how horrible and scared I felt? How could you leave him in our house with your wife and children when all you had to do was call the company and ask them to replace him? You always tried to make me feel like my emotions were stupid, like I was being over dramatic...No matter what my feelings were, you were only happy if you were doing everything in your power to make me feel like they weren't worth anything. You wanted me to be alone with the very man who stole my virginity because doing something about it would mean what??? This is where I get lost because I don't understand why you couldn't have come home at least or called him out of there or God forbid, at least tell me you were sorry.The very man who was supposed to protect me purely out of love for me turned his back on me again and again. I never felt like I was of any real concern or importance to you.
How many times did I beg you to work with me to start to fix us? To go with me to therapy or to go out alone...I did everything I could think of to strengthen our relationship. Why when I finally found someone who actually heard me when I talked, listened to me and tried to console me when I cried, did you treat me like I was some kind of cheating, horrible person? I could have so easily gone out and met someone and cheated or fell for any man who paid even a little attention to me, yet I stood still for 17 years, let the world and my passion and friends pass me by, took on your needs and asked for nothing in return for many, long and painful years. Suddenly I met someone that didn't see me as "just" a Mom or just a woman who could wait on him, but a person, a woman, someone beautiful and sweet...How could I have not been taken by that? No one who had any real honest feeling, who needed love, would have turned down the chance at talking and dreaming of being with a man who gave them what I hadn't had in so very long....Love, attention, passion and a voice. And why when it all happened didn't you fight to keep me? Instead you told me that I needed too much. If needing you to shut the t.v. off for a few minutes and to tell me you love me while looking at me was asking too much than yes, you should have left immediately. But you not only left, you found another woman before you even had put an end to us...
It would have been so very easy for you to have made me happy. I never asked for anything accept love and some attention. I was never the kind of person who wanted big diamonds or fancy clothes or cars...I only wanted what you promised to give me-Love. How long was I supposed to pretend to be happy and fulfilled while you sat there staring at the television??? How much louder did I have to scream than that police scanner to finally be heard? There wasn't anything I could ever do to compete with what a fire or ems call did to both your adrenaline or ego. I tried..Told you how proud I was to have you as a husband, to have you father my children, to be the wife of such a hard-working man...I tried to make you feel like the best man in the world because for so long I believed all those things. Yet soon I was just saying it all because I started to feel so sad and depressed, I could see nothing but the darkness of the world you left me in.
Yes, you said often that you loved me. You even bought me flowers when you would realize it was my birthday....There were times you would even surprise me by caressing and not poking and man handling me...Yet it came so rarely and it was almost never more than once. I felt like a plant you forgot about---a flower stuck in the garden because of my want to not disrupt the earth by wanting to spread out, by not wanting to upset my kids and your life....Dying from lack of love and sun~Drooping so low and having you never caring or noticing except when it affected you.You cared more about what we looked like to others...Working 16 hours a day, watching tv and sleeping all the remaining hours with no love, no desire to show my your love and never wanting to take your family out anywhere----Its a surprise I lasted as long as I did. But when I got sick after Mom's death and went to bed for 2 years, never leaving the house or doing anything but sleeping and crying-That was me realizing that I had lost my Mother and now I had no one to tell me things were going to be alright and make me ignore the truth. When Mom died so did my ignorance and need to stay quiet.At first the truth of our demise paralyzed me and now it drives me.
I will thank you for a few things-Bailey, Tessa and for making me want more...If I hadn't seen a way of life that was sad and unloving with a man who was closed off and unemotional than I would not have been so very drawn to and taken by the beauty of a man so free with his feelings and loving.More than that you taught me that while I will let myself love and trust him, I will not lose my identity or self-worth to loving him. I am lucky though because I have met a man who would never dream of stripping me of all the beauty he fell for but instead wants to nourish and make that beauty grow.
So, as the days go by and you go into that life you've so quickly made with your new girlfriend, and you bury yourself in work and all the other things you let divide us, I do sincerely hope someday that your heart will awaken to what have denied inside of yourself. You will never be able to love anyone until you figure out what it is inside that you are trying to hide. I have no more time to waste trying to knock down your walls...I have my own walls to let go of thanks to the fear you have instilled in me over the many years...Yet everyday the sun gets brighter and my walls thinner. Everyday I am a little bit further away from the pain and loneliness I felt for so long with you and miles closer to the feeling and euphoria of true, unrestrained love towards the man I will spend my life with...I go not with resentment or with pain anymore but with the truth that I did not fail....The day I left you was the very day I started to let myself begin to live and love again.I am beginning too to forgive you for all the years of my life you wasted, that I allowed you to waste, only half loving me. I do hope you can find away inside to love whole heartedly...Not just in the first year of the relationship but even decades later...But I only really have room to worry about 4 people now- Our son and daughter, my Love and, finally, ME. The future of those 3 people with myself is all that I will carry along anymore. I am burying you with all the darkness that I've allowed into my world.
July 29, 2011
So, here goes.All the turmoil, hurt, questions and all else...
My letter to my soon to be Ex-husband~
14 years ago I stood before you and said I loved you and married you. You looked into my eyes and promised me that you would love, honor and care for me till your last breath. I carried both our children, even helped to raise the son you had from your first marriage never complaining even when I was doing all the raising and you were doing anything and everything else and never around. I swear with all my heart that every single day I woke up, I put all the love and passion I could find into my life with you. I did everything you wanted, responded to all of your needs and even let you take out all your anger on me. I never asked for anything from you except love. I was NOT perfect but I was-(I am) human. I have needs. I wanted to feel that connection to you that we had for a mere few months. I wanted to be able to break down your thick and very tall walls that you built around yourself and help to free you from your own pain. Yet you almost never spoke to me from that place in your heart, you never let down your walls for even a second, but instead you kept me as far away from you as anyone else.
I was so lonely for almost our entire 17 years that we were together. There were times though that we would play, have fun and laugh. In those moments between your smiles, I thought I might just have finally broke through to meet the real you...But I was wrong. Time after time you would reset your walls thicker and stronger. I truly believed the entire time that it was my fault that you were that way...That if I were a better wife you might have let me in close to you. I always felt like I was a failure, like you were not at all happy because your smile was so hard sometimes to find. And when you pushed me away literally and figuratively, I would let you...Then I would go off into a depression because I feared I was the problem.
To spite the loneliness and the feelings of having to hide my true needs from you because showing them meant arguing, I stayed true to you. I never followed my heart even when I had packed my bags and even packed the kids up. I felt like if I left you I would do more damage, that I would hurt you and, honestly, that I would fail on my own. For so long my identity was "Wife", "Mommy", "Maid" and there was no room for "Stacy", "writer" or even for me to jump into a job because every single time I tried to, you would find a way to get me to quit, to call me home and to make your own needs more important than mine. It got so bad that I never felt like I could go out alone even to be with a friend. I felt like if I did I was abandoning the kids, that you would be miserable home alone with them and that in the end the fun wouldn't be worth the problems I would come home to. That feeling came easily since it was exactly what you wanted me to believe...Why did you do that? Why did you let me go out, fight for a job, work hard for a few months arguing against even my own guilt over not being home where I was made to feel like I belonged, only to make it so damn hard for me to stay working? The time our son swallowed the quarter, I was one day into a new job and had to rush home then quit the job so I could wait on our son to pass the darn thing. As if I didn't already feel the tug to be home, I didn't also need your judgmental statements and your excuses why I should stay home and lose my job....Even when you were unemployed your needs and responsibilities were more important than mine. Why was your job, your work, your income, your needs, always so much more important than mine. You would tell me I didn't make enough, work hard enough...That no job I had was as important as yours. Even my last job, when I felt so proud of myself for being in charge of a program, you found a way to degrade and put down. And why didn't you give a crap about my writing? Strangers read my words, friends and family put time into reading my poetry, but my own husband didn't even know how to locate my blog or my poems. If the man who "loves" me isn't interested in my passion to write then why would I feel like anything I said or wrote was worthy of anyone?
Why when the man who raped me 15 years earlier came into our home to do work, did you not at least understand the torture and pain I felt? Why couldn't you try at least to fake sympathy for how horrible and scared I felt? How could you leave him in our house with your wife and children when all you had to do was call the company and ask them to replace him? You always tried to make me feel like my emotions were stupid, like I was being over dramatic...No matter what my feelings were, you were only happy if you were doing everything in your power to make me feel like they weren't worth anything. You wanted me to be alone with the very man who stole my virginity because doing something about it would mean what??? This is where I get lost because I don't understand why you couldn't have come home at least or called him out of there or God forbid, at least tell me you were sorry.The very man who was supposed to protect me purely out of love for me turned his back on me again and again. I never felt like I was of any real concern or importance to you.
How many times did I beg you to work with me to start to fix us? To go with me to therapy or to go out alone...I did everything I could think of to strengthen our relationship. Why when I finally found someone who actually heard me when I talked, listened to me and tried to console me when I cried, did you treat me like I was some kind of cheating, horrible person? I could have so easily gone out and met someone and cheated or fell for any man who paid even a little attention to me, yet I stood still for 17 years, let the world and my passion and friends pass me by, took on your needs and asked for nothing in return for many, long and painful years. Suddenly I met someone that didn't see me as "just" a Mom or just a woman who could wait on him, but a person, a woman, someone beautiful and sweet...How could I have not been taken by that? No one who had any real honest feeling, who needed love, would have turned down the chance at talking and dreaming of being with a man who gave them what I hadn't had in so very long....Love, attention, passion and a voice. And why when it all happened didn't you fight to keep me? Instead you told me that I needed too much. If needing you to shut the t.v. off for a few minutes and to tell me you love me while looking at me was asking too much than yes, you should have left immediately. But you not only left, you found another woman before you even had put an end to us...
It would have been so very easy for you to have made me happy. I never asked for anything accept love and some attention. I was never the kind of person who wanted big diamonds or fancy clothes or cars...I only wanted what you promised to give me-Love. How long was I supposed to pretend to be happy and fulfilled while you sat there staring at the television??? How much louder did I have to scream than that police scanner to finally be heard? There wasn't anything I could ever do to compete with what a fire or ems call did to both your adrenaline or ego. I tried..Told you how proud I was to have you as a husband, to have you father my children, to be the wife of such a hard-working man...I tried to make you feel like the best man in the world because for so long I believed all those things. Yet soon I was just saying it all because I started to feel so sad and depressed, I could see nothing but the darkness of the world you left me in.
Yes, you said often that you loved me. You even bought me flowers when you would realize it was my birthday....There were times you would even surprise me by caressing and not poking and man handling me...Yet it came so rarely and it was almost never more than once. I felt like a plant you forgot about---a flower stuck in the garden because of my want to not disrupt the earth by wanting to spread out, by not wanting to upset my kids and your life....Dying from lack of love and sun~Drooping so low and having you never caring or noticing except when it affected you.You cared more about what we looked like to others...Working 16 hours a day, watching tv and sleeping all the remaining hours with no love, no desire to show my your love and never wanting to take your family out anywhere----Its a surprise I lasted as long as I did. But when I got sick after Mom's death and went to bed for 2 years, never leaving the house or doing anything but sleeping and crying-That was me realizing that I had lost my Mother and now I had no one to tell me things were going to be alright and make me ignore the truth. When Mom died so did my ignorance and need to stay quiet.At first the truth of our demise paralyzed me and now it drives me.
I will thank you for a few things-Bailey, Tessa and for making me want more...If I hadn't seen a way of life that was sad and unloving with a man who was closed off and unemotional than I would not have been so very drawn to and taken by the beauty of a man so free with his feelings and loving.More than that you taught me that while I will let myself love and trust him, I will not lose my identity or self-worth to loving him. I am lucky though because I have met a man who would never dream of stripping me of all the beauty he fell for but instead wants to nourish and make that beauty grow.
So, as the days go by and you go into that life you've so quickly made with your new girlfriend, and you bury yourself in work and all the other things you let divide us, I do sincerely hope someday that your heart will awaken to what have denied inside of yourself. You will never be able to love anyone until you figure out what it is inside that you are trying to hide. I have no more time to waste trying to knock down your walls...I have my own walls to let go of thanks to the fear you have instilled in me over the many years...Yet everyday the sun gets brighter and my walls thinner. Everyday I am a little bit further away from the pain and loneliness I felt for so long with you and miles closer to the feeling and euphoria of true, unrestrained love towards the man I will spend my life with...I go not with resentment or with pain anymore but with the truth that I did not fail....The day I left you was the very day I started to let myself begin to live and love again.I am beginning too to forgive you for all the years of my life you wasted, that I allowed you to waste, only half loving me. I do hope you can find away inside to love whole heartedly...Not just in the first year of the relationship but even decades later...But I only really have room to worry about 4 people now- Our son and daughter, my Love and, finally, ME. The future of those 3 people with myself is all that I will carry along anymore. I am burying you with all the darkness that I've allowed into my world.
July 29, 2011
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