Tolerance, Blame and Forgiveness

I've had a lot of kind of heavy topics bouncing around in my head for, well a couple months now.  I think it's because as I look back on where I was a year ago, I can't help to feel a everything all over again.  I know we're still a couple months out from when I actually left, but things were set in motion, like unstopable bullet train motion, in May of 2011.  At least, that's about where I can trace The Point of No Return to.  And everything is kind of compounded by the fact that tomorrow (August 6) would have been our 9 year anniversary.

Remembering the events of last summer, the snowball effect and the effects one man's choices had on my life and many others, has caused me a lot of angst the last few months.  I've had to wrestle a lot internally and I know it has caused a lot of the stress and anxiety that I've suffered the last bit. 
Pardon me while I go back in time a bit so you better understand where this post is coming from. 
When I came home from the Girls Disneyland trip in May 2011, he had decided to stop wearing his garments.  He never told me.  But I was the one who did his laundry, so obviously I noticed.  And it made me sick to my stomach.  And considering the flu bug that had plagued the Disneyland trip, I had an easy excuse to him for not feeling well.  I suffered fairly silently for a few weeks, but I realized quickly, that a decision was going to have to be made.  A family picture, family reunion, planning for a Disney World trip and many other things were coming up.

Please understand that while I can express myself fairly effectively through the written word, confrontation face-to-face is very difficult for me.  And this is particularly true with delicate topics very close to my heart.  I have a tendency to cry when I feel like I'm being attacked or blamed or anything like that.  So I decided to write him a letter.  The thing is, I had kind of seen the signs before I left and I had left him one note for everyday I was gone on the trip, hidden through the house, telling him different reasons I loved and appreciated him, and one very vulnerable letter detailing my concerns about some of his life decisions.  And then he went and did what he wanted anyway.

I wasn't sure that another letter was going to do anything, but I felt like this time, he needed to understand the new potential consequences that I was starting to see.  I told him that while we hadn't to this point considered divorce, it was something we could no longer ignore as a possiblity.  We had become too different and wanted very different things out of our lives and the lives of any children we might bring to family.  I expressed my heartbreak at all the promises he had made me when we first got married, that he would no longer, if he continued down this path, be able to fulfill.

I found this letter on my computer in May when I was working on cleaning somethings off.  When I read it, I realized how much he truly did not want to be with me.  I had given him every chance to try to be with me.  I had tried to be fairly tolerant of his new views and had given him plenty of time and space to explore things.  But I always made it very clear that the path he was choosing was not an option for me. 

From about the time I got home from California until I moved out in October, I slept downstairs on the sectional.  I claimed it was because it was so much cooler downstairs and I slept better.  Both of which are true.  But it was more than that. 

I knew from that point in June, with the letter, and his lack of enthusiasm to try to keep me, that divorce was inevitable.  But it just never seemed to be the right time.  And somehow I felt that if I told him the marriage would need to come to an end, I would be the one to blame.  After all, I asked for it, right?  At that point I couldn't think of all the chances I had given him; all the different ways I had tried to be supportive and encouraging and loving.  All I could think of was that I was a horrible person for not understanding or accepting him and ultimately it was my fault the marriage couldn't work. 

Even when the fateful day finally arrived, and he just let me go without much of a fight, I still felt like it was my fault.  And what's worse, he allowed and encouraged that thinking in our future interactions.  Somehow I was the one who ruined his life.

I went through quite the cycle.  And as the days, weeks and months went by, I went back and forth between guilt for being the one to initiate the divorce, to anger over the fact that he didn't fight it but still wanted to play the victim, to anger at him for his decisions and the fact that he didn't seem to be suffering consequences while I was starting over, basically from scratch.  In so many ways, where I am now, is strikingly similar to where I was 10 years ago.  Except that now I'm 10 years older and that makes everything a little more complicated.  PLUS, I get frustrated that I've already been through this part of life.  And then I feel guilty for being angry at him.

And occassionally, I hear or read stories that make me feel like I didn't try hard enough.  Or if I'd really loved him, I would have stood by him.  And I even feel like some people close to me think that I shouldn't have gotten a divorce or think I'm the one to blame.  I know each situation is unique and I don't for one minute think that this could have ended any other way, especially knowing what I know now.  But still.  Sometimes things eat at me.

But just recently, a change happened.  I realized I wasn't angry.  I wasn't resentful.  I was just, MEH.  Whatever.  He made his choices.  What consequences he doesn't face in this life, he will face in the next.  And it is unfortunate that I am having such a hard time adjusting to this new life, or that I even have to go through this at all.  But that doesn't really change anything.

I'm not sure I've reach the point where I'm ready to 100% forgive him for all the pain and heartache that he's caused me.  I know I have some issues directly related to the experience that cause relationship problems and I'm sure others will crop up every once in a while; baggage I haven't predicted.  But the point is, I'm getting closer to being able to forgive him. 

And that's definitely a step in the right direction.