When your husband leaves you, you can be sad for a while, but after that people wonder why you don't just get over it. So you hide it, the sadness.
When your brother is dying (the word on the street is less than two weeks) it's okay to be sad.
I am using my brother dying to show the sadness i always feel, but now it's acceptable. I am not over it. I will probably never be over it. But i feel ashamed to have let a man (my ex) make me so sad.
Last night my daughter came home from a dinner with her dad and told me that he wished we had broken up when she was three. That last 17 years of being a family meant nothing. I don't think he should have told her that, and i wish she hadn't told me. That hurt.
Do not misunderstand. I am devastated that my brother is dying. I know he is going to die soon, i KNOW it, but i still don't believe it.
The people who wonder why you don't get over it, might not have given themselves over to a relationship as completely as you did. It isn't easy to reclaim power over ourselves once we have offered it to others
ReplyDeleteIt's okay to be sad. I spent most of my life angry as a way of avoiding feeling sad, so I think sad is okay.
ReplyDeleteAs for your brother, I am so sorry. It's awful and it hurts something awful. I have a very dear friend who has cancer and she believes she will be cured. She has three young girls, what else can she believe?
Sending hugs although that won't take away the pain, it is simply to be endured.
Sometimes I imagine what would happen to me if my husband left, either if he chose to, or if he died. And it leaves me paralyzed. How would I figure out the finances? How would I learn how to use the yard equipment? And how would I sleep? How would I find reasons to breathe and eat and leave the house? Marriage, especially long ones, entangle us in ways that make disentanglement impossible. When we are apart, we are torn apart, not disentangled, and we lose limbs in the process. You are learning how to function without those limbs and how could that process be anything but painful? People who wonder why you don't just get over it are not comprehending what you are really doing, which is miraculous really. It's a metamorphosis.
ReplyDeleteThe reason your ex can afford to say idiotic things like that he wished he had separated from you seventeen years earlier is because he has entangled himself with someone else, and so he is not suffering the pain of learning how to do things alone. He has cheated himself out of learning how to function on his own. And so his recovery can seem effortless because it is not really a recovery at all. He has only transferred his insecurities to another place where he thinks they will be better hidden.
You aren't poison. You are clearing out the poison, and that is painful.
I wish a peaceful transition for your brother, and a peaceful recovery for you and your whole family.
God, Mischief put that in a way I couldn't even begin to express. I was just thinking this morning that of all people, you're ex has no right to judge or urge you to 'get over it' not simply because he cheated, but because he is not living what you are, he has no idea what you could be going through. The comment he made indicates that not only did he 'disentangle' without the painful tearing of limbs, but he started the process many years ago. He spent the last 17 years pulling himself out of the marriage. You've earned the right to take at least 17, but of course, more than that: however many you need.
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