Be Patient. I Move Slowly!

I want to cry today. I want to acknowledge everything I'm letting go of, all that was lost, and the position I am in now that enables me to have opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise had. I want to spend my day letting go, and not meeting any other goals. Letting go is something I am slow at. I'm also an impatient person. So naturally, I need to gain patience.

Although it's been two months since I arrived in Texas, it is only now starting to sink in how terrified I've been the last few months of my life. I'm not the type of person that gets everything quickly, not when it comes to change, and the details that come with change. As I said, it's been two months, and now that I'm over missing home (even though I'm still going back, which I will touch on later) it's starting to bother me when I see, hear, or talk about what happened. I guess you could say it's still too soon for me to remember what happened without still experiencing some of the emotions that went along with it.

I have a son for goodness sake, how did I not see this? Did I see some aspects of it and not listen to myself when I could have? Oh, yes, it was totally preventable. If we're going to place responsibility on any one's shoulders, I don't have a problem with the shoulders being mine, and me taking all the blame. I don't care about that. I'll be more than happy to say I screwed up, admitting I was wrong is the easiest part for me. Admitting I was scared? Not so easy. Admitting all the things that went through my mind? Not easy. Knowing that my son has been through all of this, and I can't take it back, THAT is hard. Try not beating yourself up over that one.


Admitting that I'm lonely and I still think about the man I left? That, of all things, is incredibly hard. I miss seeing his face sometimes. I miss all the good things about him. It doesn't mean I'm changing my mind. It doesn't mean I love him. It means he was the first person, as a companion, I had allowed myself to have since my son was born. I didn't know what it was like until I met him. It was wonderful, to have an adult as a companion, instead of only my son. I loved it. We had good times, me and him. Whatever his issues are, he was still a person. He still had good things about his personality that I liked. We still made each other laugh incredibly hard. That will always be my favorite part.

Except, well, with this man, he didn't want me to have a life if he wasn't in every second of it. Do I hate him? No. Do I feel anger when I think of all he did in retaliation to me shutting him out of my life? Yes. It was wrong for him to break in my house, to throw rocks through my windows, to have his friends watch my house, send me threatening messages via fake accounts on social networks; it was wrong that I had to put up with him down the street from my mother's house, waiting to see if I would show up. I had a personal protection order against him. He was never arrested. Do I blame the police department. No. Am I upset that they couldn't do more by law? Of course. I have a son to protect. Why wouldn't I have been upset?

This is the other side of the man who made me laugh, who loved plants, who was unique in his ideas and who had a creativity that could only be respected. This was the other side of him? Well, that's still sinking in. I know that some things were part of a facade he put on to manipulate me. That hurts. It hurts because all I wanted to do was love him, have him love me in return, and settle down like other people do. It hurts because he knew (and I know this because we'd talked about it before) that I could never hurt him out of the need for revenge. I don't believe in it. It makes perfect sense to me that if it doesn't work out between two people, let go and wish them the best, because that's what love is. It's what love does.

To this day, I still don't wish anything but the best for him. I want him to be the best he can be, because I did love him. However, I still love myself. I love my son. I want what's best for us. God wants that. And I left him because he wasn't what was best for us, which means we weren't best for him either. If anything, at least I had the guts to leave him with dignity, without trying to hurt him anymore than necessary, because it was the right thing to do for everyone. I will always feel that way.