To Have Me Crystalised

September is generally a maudlin month for me already, so I suppose I'm dwelling a lot on the past. One of the things I didn't realize about divorce for a long time was that I needed to mourn for my marriage.  It's a stage I ignored because I was the one who chose to leave, so in my mind it didn't occur to me to be anything other than grateful to finally be out.  And everyone was so happy for me, I should be happy.

And I was happy.  I now have the freedom to make so many decisions that I didn't have for years. I can choose to live my life any way I want. It's a wonderful thing.  I certainly don't regret leaving and I know I did what I needed to do.  At the same time, I feel regret over a lot of things. I'm the type of person that likes to fix things. And I married someone who was damaged and spent well over a decade trying to fix that damage.   I married my husband believing it was forever, believing that I could somehow find a way to make it work and as the years went on, constantly trying to keep things smooth wore on me and eventually caused me to shut down. To just shut out all the pain and focus on just making it through the day.  I look back at all those years and think of all the time I spent trying to keep things together and I feel such a sense of regret.  Then guilt, because I should have left so long ago. But I stayed out of love and out of hope that things would change.  If I just tried a little harder, things would get better.  I pushed myself to be as good as I could be and it was so draining. I don't know how I made it through sometimes when I look back.

And that's where people get confused. I hear that question so many times about why I stayed as long as I did. I hear the judgement in it and it is so painful.  I don't know if I have a better answer than you can't understand unless you live through it.  As hard as staying is, leaving is so much harder. And staying gone is even harder than that.  It doesn't make sense to people outside of it, I know. What I can say is that as terrible as things got, I knew how to survive.  And survival took a lot of energy and a lot of focus. Living in the storm, it's hard to see anything beyond it. It's only afterwards, that you're able to survey the damage left behind.

When I left my marriage, I left a dream of a life I wanted and tried so hard to have. And that dream died.  I still at times feel like a failure for not being able to do better. Whether it's right or wrong, I went in to marriage with the intentions of being married forever.  Of raising a family and building a home.  And I tried so hard to make it happen.  I felt it was my responsibility to make it work.  I can see now that it really wasn't all on me, but it's still hard for me to not feel guilt.  I'm trying, though.