One of my goals - and I am not sure I posted it was to get to the point with The X where - there was no longer anger left and I could actually look back and see there was a lot of not so great stuff and some good stuff. I did not want a B/W picture of my M.
I wanted to do this so I could also be more realistic in a future R. There will be good and there will be bad. I wanted to avoid that extreme type of thinking "oh no this isn't working - it is just like my M."
Forgiveness was not really my goal. B/c forgiveness is an affirmative action - my goal was to simple let the bad go - to let it just float away.
And lately I do sense a softening in my perspective. The M was simple one of many events in my life. There are things in my life that worked out well, some work out okay and some do not work out. The M fell in that latter category. No need to demonize The X. Perhaps we lacked the proper tools and/or maturity to make the M work. Perhaps it was just not a good fit.
While I picked most of the shrubs/trees in my garden. I will have to give The X credit where credit is due. He did plant a gagilion shrubs for me. And when he did things in the garden for me - it was an expression of his love for me. I didn't want to see that for awhile. You can shred pictures - but well I am not going to uproot trees and shrubs that he planted. He is the one that came up with the winding path idea and the idea of layering levels of beds - to create a foreground and a background.
Some parts of my M were very ugly - but some parts of it were good. And it was not an easy 5 years b/c his entire family died one after another from prolonged illnesses w/in 3 years of our M and essentially left him alone. He also no longer had a place to call home in Germany - so he also lost part of his roots. While that does not justify some of his reactions. We are all human and we all react and we all make mistakes.
I have changed my decision to take all of July off. I will work a reduced workload and take time off. That way - I can continue to maybe enjoy my weekends off the rest of the year.
I don't want to swing from one extreme to another. The goal is sustainable balance.
Life really is good! It feels like Monday for the first time in months - in that I had fun all weekend and now have to drag my rear back into work. It really is hard chasing all sorts of gardening throughts away from my brain! Yes - it is a "normal" Monday! Time for me to get serious about work.
