Friday, December 6, 2019

How To Grow Your Own Heart

Would you erase your memories if you could? Not all memories, of course, but painful ones?
There was a time when I would have signed up for that without hesitation. I longed for some sort of lobotomy that kept me functional but stripped of trauma. Or a fall that would render me amnesiac, like a soap opera character. 
However, with technology on the horizon that promises (threatens?) to do exactly that, I find myself far more ambivalent. 
Do I really want to forget everything associated with my husband's infidelity?
I'm far enough out from D-Day (closing in on the 13th anti-versary) that the sting is long gone. I sometimes have trouble remembering the OW's name, a name I thought was seared into my brain. 
Sometimes, when one of you amazing warriors shares your story, there are details that make my own heart quicken, my stomach sink and my eyes well. I'm right there with you and, oh man, it hurts like  hell.
But mostly, I'm left with the life I've built since that horrible day, the lessons I've learned, the appreciation I've gained. 
And I wonder, was the pain the price I had to pay to get where I am? 
I hope I don't sound cavalier. Because I know just how acute that pain is. I have some sort of muscle memory that takes me back to the hyperventilating, the bizarre sense of falling without a net, the abject terror of another day in which, it seemed, anything could happen but it would probably be bad. 
But I've got the long view now. It's a view I never imagined. So intense was the pain of betrayal that I couldn't conceive of it ever receding. Dulling perhaps but persisting. Like an arthritic knee on a rainy day.
It isn't like that, at least not for me. It's more the memory of pain than pain itself. Like a diary in which you know you felt that way – after all, it's right there in your handwriting – but it feels like someone else.
How did I get here?
Good question. Because I certainly didn't have a plan, nor a map, which is what I wanted. And which is why I wrote Encyclopedia for the Betrayed because if there's a shortcut, a blueprint for getting the hell out of the darkness even a tiny bit faster, then bring it on, right?
But it began, honestly, with growing my own heart large enough to include myself.
Simple, huh? 
Not for me. So deep was my own shame that learning to make space in my heart for myself felt Herculean. It felt selfish. I didn't deserve it, I was certain. My lack of caring for myself left me particularly vulnerable to the pain of betrayal because somewhere, deep deep down, was the belief that my husband's infidelity was almost inevitable. I was fundamentally unlovable.
I had covered it well for a lot of years. 
But betrayal stripped me of my armour and laid my heart bare. And it held no room for me.
"When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That's why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness. Understanding someone's suffering is the best gift you can give to another person. Understanding is love's other name. If you don't understand, you can't love."
Those are the words of Thich Nhat Hanh
"To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love," he says.
Sound familiar? It's a paraphrase of something else we say often on this site: Hurt people hurt people. 
And though it usually refers to the betrayer rather than the betrayed, I've come to understand the ways in which I hurt myself because I was hurt, the ways in which I shrank myself to accommodate others, was quiet when I should have been loud, accepted crumbs because that's what I'd been taught to accept
All of which is a long way of saying, I'll keep my memories. Yes, they were excruciating. But within them is the memory of a me who deserved my compassion but received my scorn. A me that I can retroactively nourish and a heart that I can continue to grow to make room not only my own flawed self but the flaws of those I continue to love, suffering I can much better understand. 



2 comments:

  1. TryingToStaySane&StrongDecember 9, 2019 at 6:23 PM

    Came across this,
    Healing Your Emotional Pain: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SoVkzNewJ34

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm feeling very stuck this past couple of weeks. I read the posts and hear the optimism and positive that can come from some of the darkest times, and I feel like I just need to reach and grab it, yet I feel utterly incapable of doing so.

    I am still stuck with this whole "forgiveness" thing. I can't seem to move on. I am desperately waiting to somehow feel love and connection with my H again, but it isn't happening. I am still angry I think, that I am in this position through no fault of my own. That I am fighting to hold everything together for the children, for our home, for our lives... but inside I am screaming louder and louder that this isn't enough right now.

    I think, and fear, that I am starting to realise that I may not be able to be happy in this relationship, and my options genuinely are as black and white as stay, but be unhappy, or separate with the risks that holds. I had so HOPED that there was a third way. I had convinced myself that I was able to find that "new relationship with my old Husband", but I think that is the issue. My Old H hurt me. Repeatedly. And he isn't changing, or changing enough, and so I can't love that person. We are best friends, I support him, would not wish to hurt him, but do I look forward to seeing him at the end of the day? No. I prefer the days he is out in the evening. I prefer a weekend if he is away and leaves me to enjoy time with our girls.

    Would I wish to erase the memories of the past? I would wish that the events never happened, but maybe that wasn't what the post above was asking. I would rather know, given that they DID happen. But I cant say any positive has come of it as yet for me. I don't think I am a better person in the slightest. I am probably bordering on depression meaning I don't socialise as much as I would have before, and when I do, I'm no fun, I tend to just want to go home and go to bed. I HAVE managed to look at next year and focus on booking up things that I know I will enjoy, but will they bring me any real joy? I'm not sure. Probably not as much as a loving close relationship would. So I will enjoy the cookery class with Mum, the experience day with my Dad, but I will still come home and feel agitated in my H's company, frustrated by the laziness I can see when he doesn't put dishes away, or leaves clothes littering the floor for me to pick up.

    I am rambling on.

    I have no answers, no questions, no real point tonight in my writing. I just feel so angry and fed up and trapped and it is a miserable feeling.

    ReplyDelete

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