Remembering the good

As many (most?) of you readers know, I got divorced from my university boyfriend / the boy next door / that rat bastard several years ago. It was a part of my life that was inexplicably, overwhelmingly painful, for a number of reasons. A part of my life that I will in some ways never get over, always carry the scars from, when I graduated from my fairytale life into a gritty reality that I never really wanted to know. 

It was a big wake up call. It was realizing what heartbreak really is, and isn't -- it isn't that high school boyfriend, or even missing that boy that you really did love very much from a long time ago. It's coming home and realizing that the man you pledged your life to, in front of all those you held most dear, doesn't respect or like you enough to be honest with you, to keep trying in a relationship, to keep those very basic promises he made to you so long ago. I will love, honour, trust you, have you as my beloved all my days.

We wrote our own vows, called each other our beloved. I have never again used that word to describe anyone; it no longer has any meaning. 

One of the hardest parts about such an acrimonious and poorly handled break up is that for years, I could only recall the pain. The injustice of it, the angry, angry memories, the deep bodily scars that scratched over my soul that morning in November when everything broke. I remembered the fights, the disagreements, the disconnect, the unhappiness. I remember dividing up our things, I remember the continuous betrayal of drawing out the proceedings for literally years longer than they should have been. I remember the satisfaction I had when I finally got a good lawyer and forced him to capitulate. You can break everything I held dear, but I will in the end screw you over for money, which is poor satisfaction, but at least I did something to let you know that it was Not Okay.

And the worst part of that is that I can't fathom how I ever loved someone so evil. And it makes me feel awful because what kind of person am I, that I could ever have loved someone so horrible? How could I have been so duped, so taken in, so stupid, so self-loathing to have loved someone like that?

He became a monster. 

It's been almost seven years now -- I've now been with The Man longer than I was married, for pete's sake, we have a kid and a house and a life together. But it's only now that I can remember some of the good things. Disconcertingly, I find myself missing him. I don't want to miss him. I remember what he did to me, and it feels like a betrayal of me, of everything I hold dear, to miss him. 

But I also think that maybe this is good. Maybe this is partly forgiving myself, finally, for loving him. He wasn't a monster. He was a man, a weak man, who couldn't be honest with himself or me, but he was also someone who sent me flowers at work, and wrote nice cards, and bought food he knew I loved, and liked to read and who tried -- but failed -- to be a good person. I have a new iPod, and I play the songs I remember from our earliest days, days like this at the beginning of spring, and I remember how excited we were to have found each other, how we were about to embark on a life together, and how our faces used to light up when we saw each other. I remember our first apartment, I remember the tiny basement suite he had, I remember the bed in the living room and eating fruit and whipped cream in the wee hours of the morning while we whispered about the wonderful future we would have together.

It wasn't all bad. I wasn't crazy to love him, I wasn't bad to think it would last. I was just young, and hopeful, and naive in the ways that people can inflict pain upon each other. I wanted to believe that there were always happy endings. And there just aren't, always.

I grew as a person from that experience, I grew into someone who is, I think and I hope, a better partner and a better mother and a more thoughtful, empathetic person. A quieter person, a more introspective person, a kinder person. I hope. I wouldn't trade what I have now for even five minutes of the last relationship, even five minutes at the beginning. But it's good to remember that beginning, remember those songs and those moments that was the genesis of it all, remember that we did love each other once. 

And forgive myself, because I was 23, and it was romantic and I loved him, and I could never ever have forseen that the guy who grew up mere blocks from me, whose brother I went on school trips with me, who cooked me breakfast in bed, could later betray me. 

My only fault, in the end, was ... nothing.