The Good Stuff

It started out lovely, shiny and new. I jumped in and revelled in the feelings that I had not felt in decades. After 30 years with someone else, the last 10 of those years being difficult at best, how wonderous for me.

Like most alliances, there was the phase of discovery and fascination, where those involved tended to be on their best behavior, hiding their darker sides. The unconscious darkness stayed in the background, laying dormant, waiting and watching.

And then the shift, who did it first....I couldn't say. But being myself, I would blame him for hiding the parts of him that were too hard for me to tolerate. And the more he hid, the more I reacted. Not coming from a healthy foundation, I fought it, wondering why. Why stay here when you want to be someone I cannot handle? Why lie and say you will and then do the opposite.

I cannot give his side except to say that possibly it was my need to control was what forced him underground.

What I know, for sure, is that I went crazy. I fought and, to be perfectly honest, on occasion surpassed acceptable boundaries. 

Had we been healthy, we would have wished each other well and walked away but neither of us were healthy enough to do that. 

Now we are both on the road to recovery. Ridding ourselves of ill adaptive tools we acquired in order to survive our childhoods in tact and our marriages without jumping off a cliff. I am cleansing myself of a tremendous amount of rage that really is fear. And I think he would say that he is learning to be himself without shame and live authentically rather than be one person one place and another person somewhere else. I could be wrong....I shouldn't speak for him.

Either way, we are healing and we are doing it together. And I am amazed at how much better life has gotten. We would have missed the good stuff had we walked. 

They say things happen when they are suppose to. I don't know if I hold to that belief. I'm more of a "Life is chaos, make the best of it". 

That's exactly what I am trying to do.