I wasted ten years of my life with the wrong person.
Even now, as my fingers hover over the keys on the keyboard, it’s hard to let those words sink in. The optomist in me wants to believe that those years weren’t a waste. I learned a lot of valuable lessons during that time. I grew as a person, and most importantly, I have an amazing son as a result.
However, the realist in me is saying something different.
“TEN YEARS!!” she shouts.
She has a point.
I endured so much in those years. Horrible things. Things that no one should have to go through. The worst part is that 99% of those things were at the hands of a man who was supposed to love me. If that’s not bad enough, the realization that I let those things happen is a very hard concept to grasp. Someone to whom I devoted my entire life, thought I wasn’t good enough. And I was OK with that! I took it as a challenge to work harder, be better. I know now that nothing would have been good enough. Now. As in ten years later. It took me years to realize I didn’t deserve to feel like scum, I deserved so much better. YEARS!!
I do feel I need to make one thing clear, he never, ever laid a hand on me, except for the final day of our friendship (which I’ll explain later). Everything I went through was mental. He was the king at those games. Life is a playground to him. He’s so childlike he makes our son look like an adult. He reveles in manipulating people. In making anyone believe one thing while meaning something so completely different, you can’t help but wonder how his sick mind connected the two. He’d lie to my face and tell me it was ok because he had his fingers crossed behind his back and be so dead serious that it left me feeling like I was the idiot for believing him. It was all my fault.
You know that old saying: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”?
Bullshit. Every last word of it.
The words he said to me, the coldness in his voice and the sub-human way he made me feel are far worse than any punch, or slap, or kick.
And the fact that I’m just learning he did the same to my oldest son (from a previous marriage) is enough to bring me to my knees. . . . .
It’s hard to figure out where to focus my energy right now. While I know I can’t change the past, not that I would if I could, I have to wonder where my life would be if I had told him to kiss off sooner. On the other side of things, I have learned so much about myself in the past six months that I wouldn’t have otherwise, which is a huge blessing.
So this blog is about the story of my journey. My trip from the insecure, dependent, and self loathing person he created, to the person I will become in the end.
My pursuit for happiness. As I learn to balance what once was, to what is, and is yet to come. It’s my road to realizing that I do deserve happiness and dammit, I will stop at nothing to achieve it. . . .
