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She Let Go of My Hand - A Father's Memoir of His Divorce Journey
von: John D. Wattson
BookBaby, 2016
ISBN: 9780996880282 , 582 Seiten
Format: ePUB
Kopierschutz: frei
Preis: 5,19 EUR
A Little Background
In the beginning, we were young and happy. Veeby and I met in high school, I “chased her until she caught me” as we liked to say, and then we grew up in life together. We married young and at our wedding, we purposefully did not use the “traditional vows”…instead, we each said the following:
Before our friends, family and God,
I stand here today committing my life to you.
I choose you as my companion and friend through life.
To share with and love with; to accept and respect.
I commit my time and understanding; my loyalty and love.
I promise to continue dreaming and working with you;
to make our lives worth having lived.
I choose to share my life with you.
We publicly acknowledged we were on a journey together…by reading this during the ceremony:
The way is long…Let us go together
The way is difficult…Let us help each other
The way is joyful…Let us share it
The way is ours alone…Let us go in love
The way opens before us…Let us begin.
15 years later, we used the same vows and reading at our Renewal of Vows Ceremony.
We were very much in love and looking forward to our journey together. Veeby was happy. Within her early cards to me, she wrote:
1st Anniversary—My Dearest John, One year ago, we started on an adventure, and tomorrow—one year later—we’ll do the same! Let’s make it worth remembering! I love you—more than ever!
3rd Anniversary—My Dearest John, The last three years of my life have been “transforming.” That’s because when I met you, you loved me enough to allow me to change. You’ve allowed and helped me change, John. You taught me what it is to feel love and most importantly to give love. I’ve learned to love through you. For that I am forever in your debt. Let’s make the next three years as “transforming” as the last three! I love you!
My Birthday—My Dearest John, My wish for your birthday is that you acknowledge the wonderful person that you are. You should let that wonderful person be known by others than just me! Thank you for sharing your life with me.
4th Anniversary—My Dearest John, Thank you for coming and staying in my life. You give my life the stability I’ve always needed—you are my rock! Thanks for loving me and letting me love you. Happy 4th Anniversary! With all my love,
5th Anniversary—I love you very much, John. I want our lives together to be filled with joy…for the way has been joyful—so let us share! Happy 5th! Much love…
Valentine’s Day—John, I love you more and more as the years go by! Here’s to many many more years of love! Happy Valentine’s Day!
My Birthday—Dear John, You grow more and more special to me as the years increase in our lives together. Happy 28th Birthday! I love you very much.
7th Anniversary—Dear John, Happy Anniversary—7 years! We have a lot of changes ahead of us—but I know our relationship is strong and can only grow from them. I love you very much.
You get the idea.
However…a darkness slowly entered our relationship, as evidenced within her writings: [cue the dramatic music: “Duh, Duh, Duh”]
My Dearest John, I want to be able to undue [sic] all the hurt and cruel words I’ve caused and used—but apologies don’t seem to suffice. I want to be able to promise that I’ll never act or say such things again, but I know that I can’t promise that because I’d fail and I don’t want unbroken promises to be between us.
I know that the biggest weapon I have to use against you is the threat of leaving you. I never want that to come about, but sometimes I fear that I’ll go through with it just to prove my point. I don’t want to be like my father—backed into a corner by his pride and going through with actions that only hurt all who are involved.
You are a very wonderful human being, John—you are because I would have never married you if you weren’t. I know that I’m immature in many respects but about this I’m not—you care enough to love me and stick with me and that takes a lot of caring and goodness. I’m not an easy person to live with—I wish I could change—maybe I can but it would require your help. You’ve helped me already—so much! You’ve taught me to open up and be willing to love!
Believe me when I say that I never want to hurt you—I hate myself when I’m hurting you—it’s just a vicious cycle that I don’t know how to stop.
It’s very hard for me to forgive myself for causing you pain.
I want to be good for you, John, but I really don’t know how. I say you’re selfish—and part of me believes that—but part of me knows that I’m accusing me, not you. I’m very selfish. I love you, John.
And…
John—I’m tired of saying I’m sorry—but I guess I am. Don’t cut me off—I need you to stay in there with me and let me be angry—it won’t get overwhelming and out of control—as long as I know you care and understand—I just want it to be the two of us, not just me.
And…
You have become an ugly man, John, both in body and soul. Lately, I wonder why I stick around. I will chose another person to be emotionally close to. I have always given you that part of me—but I won’t trust it to you anymore. Sometimes it amazes me that knowing that I’m vulnerable you continue to hurt me. You should be ashamed of your ugliness John, I am.
And…
John—I’ve been very angry at you for awhile now and it’s taken me some time to figure out why. The way I see it is this! You always get what you want—if I get what I want I hear from you over and over again how I either “manipulated” it out of you or “tricked” or “whined” or “nagged” or something to that effect. I’m never allowed to just want something and feel entitled to get it. When I do express my concern or disagreement with what you want to do, I’m painted as unsupportive. I’m sick and tired of this—I have a wealth of anger towards you about this. Lately, for the first time ever in our married lives, I’ve entertained thoughts of not being married to you. I know, that’s taboo with you, but it’s how serious I am about my feelings towards you. Lately everything you do irritates me and that’s because I have a lot of anger towards you and the anger comes from not being able to feel like I can want certain things in my life without having to constantly justify them. I am tired of having to explain and justify my wants to you. Why is it assumed that your wants are more valid than mine? Don’t say they’re not because you act like they are. My wants are passed off as trivial—you are not the end all, be all. I’m tired of playing second fiddle to your wants and I’m angry.
And…
John—I behaved badly last night. I’m sorry! No excuses offered, just an apology! I love you.
And…
My anger flows—often at John—he’ll tap into it and out it comes—when it needs to have been directed at my father for his distance, at my mother for her complicity and need to protect my dad from my anger—her own anger. John and I entered into an unconscious dance—complicit in each others anger issues. But my passion for John got buried under fear—fear that I need him too much, depend on him too much—that he wouldn’t reciprocate. That I don’t love him as much as he loves me so that I won’t feel too vulnerable—find out he doesn’t love me. I resented [his work]—it caused me to pull away—to close my heart to him—to be cruel to him—cut him off, to be repelled and not want to be loving—tender—caressing—all the things he wanted—I didn’t want to feel them—because it left me scared that if I gave him that—he would just take and retreat to his world—his work—with my gift without me getting anything back—I would be left emptied, so I hoarded my love—which drove him further away. What a vicious cycle.
Again, you get the idea.
• • • • •
In contrast to her verbosity, I never really felt safe enough to write out my feelings on paper. The few times I tried to keep a journal, it was “found” and was “discussed” between us. I clearly remember destroying my fledgling journal after that. So, I was surprised when many years later I discovered two pages from my handwritten journal entry I’d written in 1982…two years into our marriage…that I’d stuffed...
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