When I realized that my marriage was over, so many years ago, I was very angry. I was angry at myself first for not getting to know my then husband before marrying him, and I was angry at him for knowing full well he never ever wanted kids and he didn't mention it to me!
Now looking back, I don't fault either of us! We were young, in love, and so wrapped in our careers, that everything else came secondary. When we got married, even though we had been dating for couple of years and had been living together for a few months, we had not thought or talked about marriage seriously.
While on vacation, in a whim he asked me to marry him! I countered let's get married here and now. Conveniently we were in Vegas so making it official was easy. He later told me that he had not thought about or planned on asking me to marry him, it was just an impulse! He said he wanted and thought that I too wanted a big-planned wedding and was very surprised by my reaction.
Anyhow, my angry did not go away after my divorce was finalized. I hold on to those feelings for a very long time. Now I feel very foolish!
Last week, I watched a few clips of Diane Sawyer interviewing Jaycee Dugard, who was abducted at age 11, and was abused physically and emotionally for 18 years. One thing that I noticed from that interview was that Jaycee wasn't angry at her abductors. She said she had felt scarred, sad, and very lonely while under captivity, but she never said that she was/is angry! Diane Sawyer mentioned that her memoir is coming out, so I went to Amazon to place an order. I got delighted when I saw that an audiobook version of her book is also available and even more pleased when I saw that she is reading it. Thus I got it right away, put what I was listening to on hold, to start listening to Jaycee's story.
Again in the book she never says she is/was angry. And actually at the end she says, I don't want to pollute my body with feeling of anger. How amazingly smart she is.
I don't want to compare my situation to Jaycee's, just our state of minds! Here she is rubbed out of her innocence, her childhood, her teenage years, her high school years, almost all of her 20s, for 18 years being in fear, missing her mother, and before the birth of her children feeling lonely all the time, and she is not angry.
On the other hand, my time with my ex, so full of love, fun, excitement, and I was angry at him for not wanting to start a family with me, forgetting that he had given me the best years of my life, up to that point! Well I guess I was angry that it had come to an end!
Anyhow, I am not sure when the anger went away, but it is gone completely. Right now I am so happy. Right now I don't regret my past and don't want to change a thing in my past because then I wouldn't be where I am right now! Where I am right now is full of happiness and full of hope for an amazingly great future.
I guess some of my anger was also because of the fact that my ex had talked me out of going to graduate school in favor of spending the school tuition on a European vacation! So every time I felt inadequate at work, every time someone with a master's or PhD was respected and I wasn't, I got angry at my ex!
What kept me from functioning these past few years has been the hope that I could go back to school, that I could get my master's, and also that I could meet a great man, that we would start a family, and that we would grow old together.
Right now I am on the path that all my hopes are coming true finally.
Jaycee too had hoped! Her hope for the future allowed her to survive her ordeal. I highly recommend her book. It is so honest, and she clearly explains how she survived all those years, and how she sees her future and her family's future now.
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