Realizations

I wrote in my journal yesterday. It went something like this:

I started eating Paleo on June 1st. I’ve made a few exceptions, but all in all, it’s really not that bad.

I realized something about myself, I had to be honest. I said the words, I got married, but I have been one toe out the door the whole time. Not because I wanted to be, but because I am scared, and my history of relationships has left me expecting that “something will always go wrong”. And then it did. My husband is a good man, and he IS the one that I want. And he DOES, no matter what HE has done, deserve someone who will be “all-in”. It would be easy to say HE lied, HE hid, HE wasn’t all-in, but that also wouldn’t be fair, and it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t be fair because it doesn’t take into account MY behavior. How I’ve been holding my breath. Grateful for this man and still, somehow, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I promised love, I promised faithfulness, I promised honesty, … I promised partnership. A true partner believes and supports, a true partner doesn’t support from one side and look for fault from the other. Oh yeah, you have to be honest. I’m not saying, support blindly. But I’m not saying that to do what I have been doing is right either. It isn’t fair. Not to my husband, and not to our marriage. And it doesn’t matter, all the “but HE did this and that …” because I can only focus on me. 

If you believe in karma, or God, or anything of the sort as you understand it, then this might make sense. One day, a few years ago, after ending another unsuccessful romance, I made a list to myself of everything I wanted in a partner. A list of good traits, abilities etc, and I even included room for reality, for mistakes, flaws. And I promised my higher power that as long as I was granted the patience to handle those flaws, I would be grateful for all the other gifts that this person would be to me. And in many, many, many ways, my husband is EXACTLY everything I asked for. Remember that expression your mom used to say, “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” My God sent me a man who is every single thing I asked for, and who is also afflicted with an addiction to  the one thing I hate. Now, I don’t believe, not for one second, that this was coincidence. I believe that it was to see -“How bad do you REALLY want it and how hard are you willing to work to KEEP it?” 

I believe this to be true. 

This is up to me. I cannot change my husband. I can only change me. I can only work on ME. 

Such a hard, hard, hard thing to realize. Harder still to do. 

 

And that’s about all that I wrote. As I was cleaning yesterday, I was thinking to myself. I always find that cleaning allows me room to vent my thoughts and cycle through them in a way that is more productive than when I stew idly. Anyway, I had some other realizations. 

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, my husband’s particular addiction is sex, or more specifically pornography. At least, as far as I know and understand it. 

I come from a line of women affected by men’s sex addictions. I hadn’t realized that until yesterday. It had never even occurred to me. I don’t know too much about my great grandmother, I only know that she had children by two different men, who had affairs, and once she divorced the second time, she chose never to remarry, telling my mom “Why would I do that?! I like my life on my terms, I’m happy to do what I choose to do.” My grandmother, my mom’s mom, married young and spent a lot of that time, as she gave birth to 8 children, sick, in and out of state hospitals for depression and in diabetic comas. Unfortunately, she married a man who would abuse her children, in every unspeakable way. One of those children was my mother. 

My mother married at 19, to a good man. Someone that she felt she could trust, someone she had known since she was 9. My father is 5 years older and wanted to take her away from the life he knew she was living. He had the best of intentions. But I feel sad to think that maybe too much damage had already been done. My parents are still married, not happily, but they come from a generation that doesn’t divorce at the drop of a hat. I can’t remember too many overly happy displays of love between the two of them. I do remember my mom always suspicious, always questioning him about other women, always hounding him about looking at commercials or tv shows to see racy images…I remember her always on edge, setting him on edge, setting the house in a tense fog. They were not exactly what the other person wanted, my parents, but they are what they got. I think, maybe, had they tried a very long time ago, to work together, to learn how the other person wanted to be loved and to work past the pain from my mother’s childhood, that they could have had a happy life. As it stands from where I can see, the happiest things they share are myself and my two brothers. These days, there’s not much left that they have in common. I wish I could change that.

And then it occurred to me. Like a slap in the face. I am on a very similar path. If I don’t DEAL with this, if I don’t CONFRONT this, if I continue to let my fears and worries and suspicions and anger RULE me … 

My grandfather (a man I never met because my mother would not allow it for any of us) did unspeakable things and I wish that my grandmother had had the courage to leave him, but she didn’t. My father, IS a good man, and I wish that my mother had had the courage to work through the pain and hurt from her past, so that she may have had a happy life with him, but she didn’t, and hasn’t and most likely … won’t. 

And now it’s my turn. I sit here, an echo of these women, with scars from their fears that have no doubt helped to shape some of my own, and I cling to my anger. I cling to my fear. I cling to my suspicion. And I live out the very same path that they did. Will MY children grow up wishing that I had been stronger, that I had been happier? Will they see me, running through the fears in my mind, and learn to shape their worlds like me too? 

I want this cycle to END with me. I want to draw on the strength that is there within me and do the work that it takes to get through and past this, to a place where I AM happier. To the place that I wish I could give to my grandmother and mother. I want to get there, so that if I ever have a daughter, she will KNOW, it exists. I want to get there because I deserve to. We all do. 

So sorry for the long post, I’ve just been emotional lately =) 

-Rain