my anniversary

Two years ago today I married Michael Darby in Las Vegas. We then went to a fabulous buffet lunch at the Paris casino with my brother Bryan and his girlfriend Candice. We rode the roller coaster at New York, New York. We went to see Mamma Mia. We went out for drinks with a work friend of his at the Rio. It wasn't the perfect wedding day... but it was special.

Michael was never perfect for me. We were never perfect for each other. He wanted me to be someone I wasn't. I wanted him to be who he presented himself to be in the beginning. I kept hoping that Prince Charming would return. He never did. He wanted maximum relationship return on minimal effort. Life doesn't work that way.

I've watched a friend go through some pretty ugly emotional abuse lately and saw some painfully familiar patterns. Husband makes hateful comments, ignores wife, belittles her, destroys her self-esteem and then tries to make all their problems the fault of her response to his abuse. They make you crazy and then blame you for being crazy.

I don't understand it. I don't understand how someone can love you one day and not care what happens to you the next. I don't understand how a man can pledge to love you for the rest of your life before God and man (and the officiant of his choice) and only a few short months later say and do the things he said to me and did against me.

I know how marriages fall apart over a long period of time but I'm still shocked that someone could grow to hate me so much so quickly. And despite the beautiful life that God has given me here... despite knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is better to live the rest of my life alone rather than every again have to live with so much hate and abuse toward myself and my children... despite the relief of not having to worry if I'm doing something that will make him angry... despite never again having to worry when he's coming home and what he's doing in those many hours that are unaccounted for... it still hurts to have been rejected by someone who claimed to love me so much.

And no matter how completely I understand on an intellectual level that I was not the problem... it still disappoints me that things turned out the way they did.

So this morning I went to work like it was any other Wednesday and I just.... couldn't. I fell apart. I knew this day was coming. I prepared for it mentally. I thought I was over it enough to not let it bother me. But it does. I had to leave work. It's the first time since last September that my emotions kept me from being able to work.

I have forgiven him for the infidelity, for the deception, for the emotional abuse that completely shattered my self-esteem and nearly cost me my life. I have forgiven him for the lies, for allowing me to become friends with a woman who was his mistress, for isolating me by taking away internet and cellphone access when I desperately needed someone to care. I have forgiven him for allowing me to linger between life and death while he neglected to check on me, knowing that I was on the verge of a desperate act. I have forgiven him for all that he has cost me careerwise, for costing me the ability to share Cody's senior year of high school, for putting Austin through three moves to four schools in two years. I have forgiven his neglect, his insults, his poor choice of priorities. I have forgiven him for threatening to keep me in a psych ward for six months, for telling me that I was Terri Schaevo and he held all the power over what happened to me. I have forgiven him for not being supportive while I was in the hospital. I have forgiven him for the things he has screamed at me over the phone since we split up, for the promises of financial support that never materialized.

I can forgive all of it. I just can't forget.

So today... I have rested and meditated and prayed and indulged myself a bit and just done the things I needed to do to stay positive and remind myself that it's ok. That it's his loss. And maybe by next year, this day won't be so hard.