Another Life Lesson

Every single month on the 23rd I never fail to notice and remember - like 4:00am I still wake up almost every morning at 4:00am. 


Not a single month goes by that I am not jerked back in time by the tragedy that now defines my life.  I look back over this blog and remember when it had been three months and I thought I should be showing progress.  I laugh at that now.  By three months I wasn't even yet looking at it clearly and I truly cannot believe it has now been three years.


I'm glad in the beginning that I did not know that I would still be where I am three years down the road.  I don't think I could have stood knowing that and doubt I would have made it.  At three months I was able to be thankful today I am just in dull, nothingness.

The past three years have changed me in ways I can't understand or explain very well.  I just know it has.  I am not the "me" I was before.  My life is now divided in two parts - "before" and "after" and they do not at all resemble each other.  It has changed all of us. One thing that is different is my perspective on what I spend my time on now.  Life is too short to fight.  Life is too short to spend my time arguing, playing head games, defending myself over something I didn't do. Life is too short to spend time stressing over my illusion of the perfect family, home or Christmas.  Life is too short to spend time begging for people to love me.  "Before" I wasted years of my life trying to hold on to relationships with people that clearly did not want a relationship with me.  Love isn't supposed to be this hard.  It just isn't.


I think I've mentioned before that I was very co-dependent.  I was a perpetual "hanger-on-er"  If someone was important to me I would never let go.  I'd hang on like a tenacious bulldog on the leg of an intruder.  I'd take disrespect, abuse, betrayal.  I'd adjust my schedule, cancel my plans, disregard my preferences and change my life to suit everyone else - just so I could hold on to something or someone that I cared about.  Someone that obviously, I was not all that important to; someone that could have casually walked away and never looked back. 


I have now learned that loving someone does not mean I have to hold on forever or be abused or disrespected or hurt.  I have come to see that I can love someone with all my heart and still let go.  I've been hurt by this unfathomable loss to a degree I never knew was possible and no matter how much or how hard I held on - they were still gone and there was nothing I could do about it; nothing I could do to hold on; nothing I could do to avoid the pain of losing them. 


The lesson I learned in that was:  while I could not avoid that pain - there were other hurts that were well within my control to avoid.  I couldn't stop the hurt of losing my son or my daughter in law or the baby that I adored with all my heart but I did not have to remain in hurtful, toxic relationships volunteering for hurt and humiliation that was in my power to stop.  It does not have to mean I no longer love them just as I still love my children that I lost --And though I could do nothing about the hurt I live with from that I can absolutely mitigate the unnecessary pain of a toxic, hurtful relationship and I should --because life is just hard enough.