Growing Up & Forgiveness

I am engaged to be married....for the 2nd. time, there I've said it! The beast is out, the one that I feel shame about, why I don't know!! I have been married before!

I try to view my first marriage as a learning process. I don't want to blame him for the rest of my life, for ruining my "happy ever after" that every girl dreams about starting from the toddler years, so I am forced to put his faults aside and find something good to take with me into the future. Here is the brief: I married young and for the wrong reasons. I married for convenience, really, because if we didn't marry I would have to move out because he had 2 little girls, and some baby mama drama. So like any sane 19 year old, ha ha, I agreed to this marriage. Coming from a family where the divorce of my mother and father was very un-pretty, I was disgustingly determined that this was going to work. The person I thought I was marrying was not what I got! Duh?? Our first visit to NH to see my mother and stepfather turned into me learning an awesome side to this person. My mother, who had recently had a major surgery, was on painkillers which my new awesome husband helped himself to, he faked an extreme ear ache to go to the local ER to get pills. When we returned from the trip, I started to see more sketchy behavior, empty pill bottles hidden here and there, strange emergency room bills coming in the mail... Reality started to set in.... I had married a using drug addict. When I started seeing the lies he told, the money he stole, his lack of commitment to our family, neighbors missing tools etc, I tried many different methods to control the situation. I tried: swearing, degrading him, yelling, ignoring him, supporting him in getting help, being his friend, threatening to leave, staying with a friend so he could get it together, getting his family involved, but he could not get it together so I had to start accepting this was not going to change. I worked very hard at finding compassion for this sick person. After 3 years of the beast of a marriage, I had to call it quits, I new in my heart that a greater force had a better plan for me. In November of that 3rd year, I was contemplating divorce and I saw a shooting star, my answer. So in December of that year, we had out last anniversary dinner and talked about throwing in the towel, he couldn't change for me and I was unwilling to continue on an unsatisfying path. I moved out later that month and have been split up for 3 years now and divorced for 2.5 years. My life really began then.....

So, what I have learned about myself is that I'm worth more then lies. I am a loving, trustworthy women, a good friend, a patient partner. I am capable of forgiveness, compassion and understanding. I can move away from that time in my life without feeling ashamed, because of the lessons I learned in communicating, patience, and bits of forgiveness that come every day. I can love someone and trust someone and have it returned to me ten fold.

I guess that time in my life taught me how to grow up...so I'm grateful.