Love Letters - Forgiveness - Healing - Freedom

I am home today taking a short break in the middle of my work week.  I was cleaning and moving my art stuff from downstairs to move it to the upstairs.  I converted a closet to a art work space. Sometimes I think I will never actually get around to do the art but I am hopeful.  With work taking 100% of my creativity it is hard to muster up enough enthusiasm to paint.  I am pretending that " if you build it they will come" ot it in this case. 

While cleaning things out I found a few old photos of my past lives at different times. It started the wheels turning and I remembered having several boxes in the basement that I haven't looked at in a long time. I know I am healed from my past because these pictures no longer evoke strong emotional responses for me anymore. 

I look at the girl in the photos and think about how much I missed trying to keep bad things from happening. "You can always see it coming but you can never stop it" a line from a Cowboy Junkies song that is so true.  I have kept something from every relationship I have ever had. From my ex-husband I kept letters he wrote me after he split and left me for a co-worker.  They married and have grown kids now.

Two letters the first before therapy and the second after therapy. In the first he blamed me for everything that was wrong with his life and felt just starting fresh would cure everything. He didn't know what had happened to us or why he couldn't love me like before. We really never had closure or counseling he refused to talk about anything. A year after the divorce he called and wanted me to meet him at his counselors appointment so we could clear the air.  I agreed hoping this would help to heal me but it was ugly when he confessed that there had been a number of infidelities over the years.  

I always felt that it was my fault that bad things happening to me. I would rather take the blame than really believe that the people I loved and trusted were so horrible. I felt like it was my fault for not seeing just how things really were.  My denial of the truth of who they had become made it impossible to move on. I internalized the pain to the point that I didn't want to live. 

The second letter was an amends letter where he admits how mean he was to me and the lies he told and the constant manipulation of my emotions. This manipulation was the worse for me because for three years he courted me leaving notes on my car and gifts in my mailbox. While he was with someone else that in the beginning I didn't  know about. Telling me one week before he was getting married that he would never love anyone the way he loved me. 

In the second letter he said he could see how much pain and anger he had built up inside and only the drugs and alcohol could manage them until they stopped working. This letter was hard to read because he was becoming the person I knew he could be but I wasn't going to reap the benefits of this new found awakening. 

I loved him like I never have loved anyone else. We were two very broken people whose pain matched perfectly for almost a decade. I was not complete without him and when I felt I was losing him I froze and stopped living which made me really attractive.  You can hear that it was still my fault. I remember falling into depression with him coming home at midnight and avoiding me altogether.

I have felt all my life that no one ever really wanted me. I was a high strung ADD child and after my mother died all the grown ups deserted me to manage there own grief. From the time she got sick I knew I was on my own so I made the best of it. Only people with strong wills ever broke through. 

As an adult I attracted people who were crazy in love with me to a point in some cases stalking me. In my mind this was proof of true love. My husband would have done anything to protect me and he made me feel safe until that obsession moved to someone else. He made me feel safe even though in the end he hurt me more than anyone. 

I can read those letters today without pain and I can forgive myself for not being able to do anything about what was happening to me. My own pain was equal to his and I couldn't feel any joy without  looking over my shoulder waiting for the next crisis to strike. With alcoholism there is always the next crisis. 

It took a lot guts for him to write those letters and they did heal me a little bit every time I have read them over the years. It still makes me jealous that he got the life we always wanted with kids but I am sure it has been no bed of roses. The devil is in the details.

Looking at the pictures and reading the letters I can see over the years the progress I was making. I still never felt I was enough and was always striving to be a better me. It is a good goal but it is time for joy now and because I am alone I don't have to meet anyone's expectations but my own. I am loving myself and not looking at happiness as something in the future. I can be happy today I just have to decide to be,

I have always done my best even if it wasn't good enough for other people or even myself. I can forgive them and forgive myself.   

 

Love Letters - Being Hit - The Promises

Saying goodbye to the past is a life long endeavor or at least it has been for me. I am cleaning up my office soon to be creative space and found a framed copy of  "The Promises" It is the Al anon version.
Number two says "We will not regret the past nor shut the door on it."

While cleaning I also found my copy of "The Power of Now".  This is one of my all time favorite books. It showed me how much time I was spending getting lost in trying to solve my past.  I just wanted to understand my part in what happened to me.  I have lived most of my life staying busy all the time thinking these millions of thoughts about what I could have done differently to change what happen.

I always believed that because I was left there was something wrong with me to the core.  Even recently I have accepted that I am the way I am and if this isn't lovable then so be it.

I have been loved by many people mostly people that have been deeply hurt themselves. I think I represent a safe place to land.  Isn't that what we are all looking for?  Once they feel better and gain some confidence they move on.  I think this means my part in their lives are over and it is time we both move on.

I was watching "The Jane Austin Book Club" last night and they were talking about the writing love letters and how the written word can have a profound impact.  I thought nobody does that today. What a fantasy well today I found about 20 pages of love letters from my high school boyfriend.  I had forgotten about the letters. We went to different schools and worked together at a fast food restaurant at night. He wrote these letters everyday and brought them to me at work.

It was by far the most romantic relationship I have ever had. He actually wrote in one that he knew only girls wrote letters like this but as long as I didn't tell anyone about them it was okay. His dad didn't want us together he knew we were too serious and he wanted him to go to his college and join his fraternity sow those wild oats.  My dad didn't like it because they were Episcopal a far cry from pentecostal.

He ended up breaking up with me because my parents wouldn't let me stay out past 11 on prom night. I begged my dad to change the rules for this one occasion but her wouldn't.  This had his dad written all over it.  I was completely devastated and we still had to work together. Ironically I had moved out by the time prom came around and I stayed out all night whenever I wanted.

Jim went on to marry that same girl.  So dad's plans didn't work.  She went to my same elementary school and I have a picture of  the whole six grade class with her in it.  That is also ironic. Any way I covered my pain well and the first time we worked together I made sure he knew I had a date for that night.  He actually got so mad he hit me.  Not hard but this gave me a good indication of what the future my hold. I laughed out loud when it happened I wanted to make sure he thought it didn't bother me.

I believe life is just life now.  People come and go based on their own needs. We really don't have any control over what other people are doing. I think if your heart it right and you have spiritual guidance then it can work out.  I do think you must always see your part in every situation but sometimes you just have to let go and accept that control of anything and anybody is an illusion and move on.

Not regretting the past can sometimes seem impossible.  I can make the past my own fantasy version reading love letters and thinking things might have turned out better than they would have. Then I have to  remember that he hit me.  The only person ever in my life, besides childhood spankings, that ever hit me.

From time to time I still have regrets about the past and feel each time I should have known better. I always took people at face value living every day in the moment until the bad things snuck up on me. I still think that is better than constantly preparing for disaster and not trusting anyone. Neither one keeps you getting hurt.