Gifts Hard Eucharisteo

There are some things in life that seem too awful to be thankful for.  To really look at your life and be thankful for where you've come from can some times seem ridiculous.  It's much easier to look forward in the light of harsh life realities.  To be thankful for the moving on.  Why be thankful for hurtfulness?  Why give credit to the pain?  We're told to be thankful in everything, yes, but I think there is something deeper to being thankful for the hard times.  Looking at those times and seeing how it's made you who you are frees you from the baggage of it, in a way.  It's not that it won't always be with you, or that you won't feel the pain of it anymore.  But thankfulness frees you from the bitterness.  And so with that in mind I write this letter.  Some of you aren't going to like it.  But that's alright.  It's honest and its where I am.

To the one who couldn't love me,

I use to lie awake at night and listen to cars go by.  I would wait for one to pull into our driveway thinking you had changed your mind and come home.  

On those sleepless nights I would replay all of the things I would have done differently.  All of the ways I would have been better.  All of the things I would have said or done to be enough for you.  

I'd hold my breath and wish you back.  

I would have taken you back.  I shouldn't have, but I would have.

And for a time I cried, and sank, and was convinced that this was all my fault.  

Until I realized that it wasn't.    And then I got angry.  Angry with you for leaving.  Angry with myself for loving you, the one who couldn't love me.

Now, I'm not crying, but neither am I angry.  You're now just a part of my story.  A past part that I'm through writing.  Except to say this.  

I'm thankful that you left.  

In your leaving I was able to stop trying to be who I thought you needed me to be and to start discovering who I was meant to be.   In the years since you've left, I have become more confident in who I am than I ever was with you.  I have begun to open doors that I thought were forever closed to me, doors that I had convinced myself I was alright with never opening.  By leaving, you prompted growth in me.  Growth that I didn't even know that I needed.

I thought being your wife was enough.  And yet you made me feel like I was never enough.   

Without you, I have become a better mother, friend, and woman.  I'm thankful for who I'm becoming without you.  

Ironically, I think you would have liked this woman.  

We got married too young.  We both know that.  We were kids who didn't know who we would become as adults.  But I knew you were a work in progress that was far from perfect.  That our relationship was a work in progress.   You should have granted me the same. 

Though, if you had, maybe we'd still be where we are.  Maybe I'm not who you ever wanted.  Maybe who I would never have been enough.  We can't know these things.  We're left with the choices that were made.  In light of those choices, I know that  I needed this time.  Time to cry.  Time to be angry.  Time to grow.  Without you.

The End.