Zelda - Baby One More Time

[Zelda09]

A friend did me a great damage many years ago, quite deliberately, a financial damage in business, after 15 years I received a letter with a cheque and a short note which read " if you can forgive me, that's good and if you don't want this recompense then please donate it as you chose. I have been saddened by my choice and have not yet forgiven myself".

I banked the cheque and wrote one for Plan International, I chose a child in my friends name to sponsor for 12 years and I let her receive the information about the sponsored child for 12 years. I hope it brought her peace, at some point in those 12 years a glimmer of it. Otherwise I did not respond. I let the universe and higher power forgive, she had atoned.

Absolutely beautiful and heart-warming.

V, and Asitis, thank you for talking through this bit about forgiveness.

My IC often asks how I got to a place of total detachment with my father, even tho he still calls and rants and is nasty on occasion. I told her, I just had enough of believing he could change. Saw it was impossible. Saw that I pitied him.

She looks at me like it is very obvious that I need to get there with my STBX, but romantic feelings I think add some complexity. And STBX was usually much more subtle except when he wasn't. I don't think I had enough volume of offenses. AND I was still getting good feelings, reinforcement (YAY, THIS is why we're together, aren't I happy right now!) from the R, which ceased a long time ago with my father.

Have I forgiven my father? I don't know. I don't think so. When he tries to tell me he has been my greatest supporter (not true in any one direction, PS, all the man has done since I was 15 was viciously drunkenly tear me down, no financial support either), I usually bite my tongue. Until he keeps on and he gets a good earful from me. Most of our 'conversations' are one sided anyway, I do make an effort to pick up the phone and let him go on, because at one time he was my very best friend when I was a little kid. And I still respect and love that part of him, and I feel that if by listening and pretending to be a daughter he thinks he loves so much, it eases any pain, then fine. Does my dog remember the day I take her to the dog park? Not really. But she's happy at the time and that counts. But he is mostly a very unfunny joke I've heard too many times and other than stoking anger - i think at the wounds I've not forgiven him for - he has zero affect on me.

In short, yes, I've been putting the cart before the horse in trying to forgive and understand STBX.

It is disrespectful to me to do so, when after that night, he sneered, he smirked, almost seemed excited at the damage he'd done...told me he didn't care to think about things, he didn't care to think how he'd hurt me, he didn't care to address his anger or temper and couldn't guarantee it wouldn't happen again, our marriage was over and he wanted to sleep around. A day after telling me how lucky he was and what a great future we were going to have.

He got what he wanted, I believe. Freedom from me and whatever misery he felt, PLUS a way to cry and claim he was kicked out of the house, as though he'd tried and tried to remedy this. Poor STBX, he really wanted his M to work out, what a sad song he sings...the day after he left the house we ran into each other. I watched him talking to a mutual friend, before he saw me, shrugging and shaking his head, her giving him one of those deep hugs of comfort...he certainly wasn't showing the face I'd seen the day before - I know I sound like a broken record, I still can't make sense out of what kind of man he must have been to play these tricks.

To your point, Asitis, who I was to fall for them...

And still I wonder, is it me that is messed up? Is he going about the rest of his life, kind and lovely now? I know it's not rational, but it's what keeps boiling under the surface.

It shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter because I need to stay with my experience of that week, and the times before I should have never excused. My boundaries sinking lower and lower. The girl I was when I met him would have drawn the line a long time ago. And did. But I kept taking him back because he was tall, handsome, kind, and I felt more love in the 'good' times than I'd ever felt with any other partner.

So...not forgiving him means this to me - it was not ok to treat me like that. To lie to me, to use me, to play these selfish games. It was not ok to tell me all the ways I was cruel (not letting his ex meet his emotional needs - "she's so much easier to talk to, Z. I can't explain it. Why do you have such a problem with this, you'd rather me suffer just because you can't be the friend I need?") It was not ok to leave me places and it is not ok with me that he was trying to sleep with me in one breath as he was telling me he wanted to date other people.

To forgive him for any of this - without his asking or atoning or even recognizing the hurt - it says that nothing wrong happened here. That it is ok he behaves this way toward me.

That is the problem. I always, always, forgave him, tried to see his side, talk it out. The times I didn't...he shrugged and seemed ok that our relationship was ending. And I couldn't stomach that so I would push me further out of the way to understand him and reconcile and make peace.

It is getting easier now. I no longer feel the desperation I'd been feeling. There are still times I cry and it's ok, they seem to be shorter storms and I don't hope for his call. I am having an easier time visualizing the hearing and walking out of it detached. I imagined he will not say anything unexpected or make a scene and it will be over quickly, simple dissolution.

I do struggle still with his face. Seeing it in pictures, remembering it. How not to look at him and see the loving, gentle, wonderful H I did for so many years. I still can't see him, and first see the raging, nasty or entirely aloof creature. I wish I could. Even his name, reading it written on paper, conjures good feelings and memories before the bad ones. I still feel so attached in this way. I would like to reverse all that, and look at him and see his face simply as a mask for what I really know lies beneath. But my tender little heart strings still see the man I would chase if he gave me the slightest reason.