Dear Mom-

I think I like the Byrds' version better.  It has a much better beat to it.  But I digress.
 

I remember you telling me once that if everything was always good, then how would we know it was good if we didn't have the bad to compare it to.  Makes sense.  After spending the last eight months in the emotional equivalent of hell, I have decided that, like all the tired old cliché's go, it always goes back to the beginning.

I remember my first impression of myself.  Vaguely.  I remember swearing that I would never have any use for anyone else.  That I was strong enough on my own. And that my life was always going to be easy because I could depend on myself and no one else.  And of course, I was incredibly wrong.  Like with everything else.  Go figure.

I have learned that there are times in your life when you need others there the same way that you need to breathe.  And that just because you have to go through a stretch of bad luck doesn't mean your world is going to end.  I had gotten complacent with Michael.  I forgot what it meant to be myself, warts and all.  I forgot that I was a strong person, and that i was also more than just a wife and a mother.  I was all of that, and I still am.

When he said that he was leaving me, my first thought was, "Now what am I going to do?" like I was unable to actually figure it out on my own.  I can hear you now, "This from a woman who could never understand why certain women stay in abusive relationships."  I do understand why now, as I understood before but had forgotten.  Not only is there a major fear factor involved, there is a certain degree of comfort in knowing what is going to happen, whether it is that your "other half" comes home from work every night and goes straight to bed, or that he comes home and knocks you across the room with a well placed backhanded slap.  It's all a part of the same complacency.  And it's not necessarily a bad thing.  To a point.  Whatever it takes to get you up in the morning, right?

When he actually did move out,  I couldn't think about anything other than the fact that he had said that he still loved me.  If he still loved me, then he'd be coming back soon.  I just had to be patient.  I convinced myself that I could afford to be smug and serene when I told co-workers what had happened.  I just nodded at them and claimed that I was never saying never, and that I wasn't waiting for him to come home but that I wasn't going to burn any bridges either.  I couldn't sworn that they believed me.  I was wrong.

When I found out that he had been sleeping with Jessica for the past three weeks, I was livid.  Not because he was being unfaithful;  that I could've forgiven. Hell, in the eleven years we were together, neither of us ever claimed to be a saint.  I was angry because he had lied to me.  I had asked him point blank several times if there was anyone else, and he lied to me for weeks on end.  And every time, he said that there wasn't.  I knew he was lying.  But I let him get away with it because I needed to have blind faith.  Otherwise, I would've had to admit that there was so much more wrong with our relationship than I was willing to at the time.  And once I realized that blind faith had taken a flying leap out the window, I went ballistic.  Eventually, I calmed down.  And THEN, I started crying.  And crying.  I don't think I stopped crying for months.  Luckily for me, those same friends who said nothing before when I was being smug and self-serving now cut me a hell of a lot of slack when I would sit at the desk and start tearing up for no apparent reason.  Thank God there were no obvious signs of pity.  I don't think I could've handled that.  What I got instead was a lot of space and quite a bit of righteous anger on my behalf when they found out there as "another woman."  I had friends offering to beat the tar out of her if I wanted, or slash her tires (never mind the slight detail that she didn't have a car).  My friends did all the raging for me.  I know on some level that I will have to deal with that on my own, but the fact that they did that for me then blows me away.

Two weeks ago, I looked at the calendar and realized it had been eight months since it all began.  I thought about everything that I have learned about myself and who my friends are.  I know that while i may or may not ever be a part of a couple again, I am still myself.  And that's not necessarily a bad thing.  I mean, there are actually people out there who can appreciate my twisted sense of humor.  And even more amazingly, I know people who treasure my intelligence a heck of a lot more than even I do sometimes, and they would never accuse me of making up the word factitious.  And I have also realized that I love to be around people that appreciate me;  in fact, I crave it the way that a plant craves the sunlight.  It's kind of a liberating feeling, not having to spend that extra energy pretending to be anything other than who I am.

I'm not blaming everything that has been wrong in my life on Michael.  Far from it.  He has his own reasons for doing what he has done and I can't fault him that.  Like I said, whatever it takes to get you out of bed in the morning.  I don't hold WHAT he did against him, but HOW he did sucked in a big way.  But that is not my problem any more.  I still have my moments when I feel that it is all my fault that he left.  And there are still those days when I feel like an ugly little troll whom no one loves.  And then there are those mornings when I forget what has happened and I reach over across the bed to ask him something.  But I'm getting over that.  I have pride in who I am becoming.  My proudest day was when I realized it was over and that I wanted to file for divorce.

When he left, I was a kind of death of the life that I had known.  And as cheesy as it sounds, I DO feel reborn.  When he left, my sanity crumbled.  Now it has been built back up.  I don't cry about what my life was any more, or what I have lost.  In fact, now I revel in what it has become.  I smile a lot more.  I'm not afraid to say what is on my mind any more.  In fact, there are those in my life now who actually want to hear what I am saying.

I'm not saying that my life is completely perfect and that I don't have my rough spots.  I may be reborn, but I'm not stupid, you know.  Bit it's a start.  And if I ever have to go through this again, I will have a better idea of what to expect.  And I will learn from that just as I have learned from this.
 

"For everything, turn, turn, turn,
There is a season, turn, turn, turn..."

-The Byrds

Love always,

Nee
 
 

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