Recently it has come to light just how much shame I carry around my last relationship. The fact that it failed. The feeling that I failed. Every time someone asks me “What were you thinking in being with him?” Every time someone asks me what happened, why it ended, how things were, why I am now the way I am. It all feels tinged with shame. And silence. I don’t want to speak of how it was- the nitty gritty details. Partly because I can’t gauge what was truth and what was simply my own experience based on my own wounds or ego. Also because I don’t want to speak badly of something I once believed in so devotedly. There’s also a part of me that feels like I won’t be believed- that I’ll simply be another “woman scorned.” Or maybe it’s that I might find out that it was indeed me- not enough, too much, egotistical, self-centred, self-focused, horrible person so far up her own ass that she’s completely oblivious and can only blame others. Maybe I don’t want to face that possibility. Or maybe that’s easier to believe. Why can’t I blame him? Why can’t I be angry at him? Why can’t I hate him? Why can’t I tell him how much he hurt me and that I hate that sometimes it feels like he ruined me? Why can’t I scream that it’s unfair that I’m the only one who has to carry this burden because he says he doesn’t even remember?
Mostly though, because it’s our story, and it belongs to us.
How do I explain that I can only share the part of the story that is mine to own?
There’s a loneliness in that.
A feeling of carrying the weight of, or even blame of, our mistakes, alone.
And how do I explain that despite, or perhaps because of, all of that, I love him more deeply. And am so grateful to him. Not in a way that makes me wish to still belong to him. But in a way that can only come from sharing in seeing the ugliest and most beautiful parts of each other. There’s a beauty in seeing someone so wholly. In seeing the humanness. The truth.
Sometimes we have to be careful what we wish for. I got exactly what I asked for. Truth. Authenticity. And at times it was bliss. And at times it hurt. And mostly, it did damage. It cut places that were too soft, and left wounds that are still being revealed. Maybe that’s the thing about truth. It delivers in ways we can’t anticipate. And sometimes we’re left with the repercussions of that. There’s a beauty in that also.