Friday, March 16, 2012

Humbling Friday thoughts

I have a fair amount of unease still, when I think about my ex husband's feelings about our breakup. I imagine conversations sometimes where he surprises me with understanding but I'm a realist, and the reality is that pain is a great obfuscation filter. It's easier to concentrate on the acute, like "the transmission died!" rather than the steps leading to the failure (low oil for years wore out the parts).

I heard through the grapevine a while ago that he thought I'd changed after the breakup and began drinking and clubbing. It's very humbling to be the recipient of negativity because it illuminates how powerless we are over how someone else decides to feel about us. I can't refute anything. I can't say actually no, I still don't drink, I don't even LIKE to drink, that never changed, why would you think that changed? And then I think but what if I did, so what? And I DO like Justin Timberlake, what of that? Why couldn't I ever feel what I felt? I'm sorry and indignant at the same time. You can't subject a person to those things that were happening, I think, and expect them not to implode. And then I have these imaginary conversations where I try to explain what was happening inside me but the thoughts fly out into the ether to be received by no one.

It just feels really awful to be misunderstood.

"Forgiving is not something you do for someone else. It is something you do for yourself. An unforgiven injury binds you to a time and place someone else has chosen; it holds you trapped in a past moment and in old feelings." ~Carol Luebering

2 comments:

  1. Yes, we are powerless over what other people think of us.
    Is it possible he is thinking that about you to make himself feel better?

    For me, the solution is to try to live in a way I believe, and worry about others as little as possible.
    Except for the Justin Timberlake thing.
    That's just wrong...

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  2. I think u can take solace in the fact that you just figured out the core issue that made the marriage fail. Maybe that's his fault or yours or both but in the end it's probably your most important discovery that he never got to know the real you and that person needed to come out. As hard as it was to escape that situation that girl desperately wanted to be heard.

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