Thursday, May 26, 2016

Not a Failure


She recently received many text messages from her soon to be ex-husband. He was missing her and was acting so kind. She was thinking of how much that she missed the 'charming' him. They had been married 32 years. That is a long time. It is a lifetime of habits.

It was during this time when she found out that his tech coach girlfriend had texted a couple of of their adult children and asked them to break into his house. They had suggested that she have a welfare check done by the police. But it is their father and she was going to stand behind their decision to go break into the house and check on their dad.

Well one of the boys went in and found his dad with empties all over. He was passed out and when the son tried to check on him, he became violent with him and told him to get out. Which is what happened when he still lived with at home. He would become violent and yell at everyone for trying to help.

At any rate, this tech coach girlfriend got him to the hospital.

Her old habit would be to run to the hospital to see what she could do for him, but she didn't do that. Her kids kept her strong. Sure enough, it wasn't long before he became vicious again and she saw the shell of the man that she once loved for the person that he truly is.

She realized that she is not a failure just because she walked away from their marriage. She really did want the marriage to work and she worked hard at it. Their marriage probably would not have lasted this long had she known the man in the beginning.

Her pastor at the time of their wedding had told her that it was in his opinion that marrying this man would be difficult. She wasn't afraid of difficult but this man was impossible.

She is not a failure because she allowed him to manipulate her feelings. She is only human. She held strong to her resolve to wash her hands clean of the toxicity of that relationship. If she could do this, then so could you. Be the exception to the rule. You are not a failure.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Good Days and Bad Days

I have to admit that there are days that are difficult but not near as bad as it use to be. I do not cry anymore. I do have a tightness in my chest from time to time, but really, it is so much better. My good days are here more often than not. I am a very happy person now and love my life and embrace it. I remind myself of how much I use to cry when we were together.

I was talking to my brother this past weekend. He said that I may not be as codependent as I presumed I was. I did leave. Although it took a long time. I did leave. Most codependents do not. So if you are wanting to leave, keep working on how you are going to do it.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Religion vs Spiritual

I was very young when I started attending a church. I have always believed in God and talked to God through my life even though we did not go to a church. When I started going to church, it was a very fundamental church. I presumed that this was how things were suppose to be and I tried to confirm to the rules and regulations. I had this picture in my head of what I thought God was suppose to be but I was finding myself seeing a God through a different lens. God was becoming more scary to me and I became afraid of God. My view began to be someone that was out there waiting for me to make a mistake just to be able to condemn me to a pit of fire and brimstone. It was this experience that shaped my relationship with my ex husband. 

Strong Feelings


I was recently given an assignment in the San Joaquin Valley Writing project #SJVWP to write about something that I have strong feelings about. The first thing that comes to mind is the family. Family is first and if it wasn't for my own family, I would not be where I am today. My kids have literally saved my life. I have taken blows for them and the youngest has actually taken blows for me. My children are the ones that encouraged me to continue my education so that I could be an independent person. Without them, where would I be?

Another thing that I am passionate about is education. I believe that education gave me the skills I needed to move on and take on an independent life. It help me to develop the self esteem that I so lacked through most of my life. It helped me to stand up for myself and finally to believe in myself.


What's Religion have to do with it?



I have many people ask me why I stayed so long. This is such a complicated answer that I will try to explain here. When we married, I felt that it was forever. I took the promise for better or worse to heart and I had planned to stay with him forever. In the beginning things were fine, but as time passed, his more dominating personality became prominent and my fix it personality ruled me. I wanted to fix him to be the husband I wanted and to be the man I felt he needed to be.

This relationship we had was complicated by the religious aspect of our church. I am not saying going to church is wrong. I do believe in God. The church we attended had a male dominated view of its members. The saints of the church were to follow the pastor without question. Families were expected to follow the father or 'man of the house', also without question. 

I will go into this more later.

Friday, May 6, 2016

Denial



For most of my own life, I lived in a constant state of denial. I didn't realize this until recently. I refused to believe that there was anything wrong. I was very content with the way things were even though it was not a pretty situation. I would work hard at keeping things peaceful and when there was a fight, I would blame myself. If I had planned for every possibility, then there would have been no reason to be yelled at. I must have done something to set him off. Because of my low self-esteem, I did not realize my own worth. Willingly, I accepted all the blame and responsibility of whatever was wrong. This came from a lifetime of conditioning that if something was wrong, then it was my fault.  My parents fought and I blamed myself. When they divorced, like many children, I thought if I was a better daughter they would still be together.

I liked my fairy tale that I was living in where everything was perfect. For whatever reason, I was totally addicted to this man and I would do anything to not have to face the truth. I was afraid of being alone. I was afraid of having to raise five children by myself. I was afraid of not having enough money. I was so afraid of so many things.

I think back on how I felt and how afraid I was. I wonder why I never drew the line in the sand and stood up to him. I would give in to anything he wanted. Not because I wanted it, but because I didn't want to displease him. I wanted him to love me and most of all, I wanted him to one day realize how important I was to him. This was something that was never going to happen no matter how hard I tried. 

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Brutal Honesty

A couple of years ago, my friend came to me and told me that I needed to work on my self esteem. I was not quite sure what she meant. I did not realize that I had a low self esteem issue. I just lived my life, tried to be a good person, raised my kids, worked my business, homeschooled my kids, and the list goes on. I was constantly busy with all these distractions that I could not take a moment to focus on the real problem. The real problem is that I needed to fix myself.

I have spent my life trying to make everyone else happy. My parents fought so like many children from broken homes, I tried to fix their problem. There problem was not mine to fix, so there is nothing I could have done to fix them. When I married, my husband was charming at first, but as our marriage continued, I realized that he had his own problems and I tried to fix him. Again, that was no for me to fix. I surrounded myself with projects and that goes for the people that I let in my life. I had that need to fix others when really, I was the one in need of fixing. I felt that as long as I was working on a project that I could ignore what really needed to be fix, which was me.

On these pages, I will write my story of how I learned to face my own self and start to fix me. This story isn't over yet . . .