i have an ex boyfriend who is quite possibly the most brilliant man i've ever met. i've blogged about him before a few times. now, he broke my heart and let him tell it, i broke his but whatever the case may be, now that we're both older and wiser, we still speak from time to time. if you believe in soul mates, then he would fit the description. now before i even ask this next question, let me just say for the record, that we hurt each other. no one person is a victim, but we are talking about a particular offense - cheating, which he did.
now, i do believe that no one is perfect and committing a wrong in a relationship doesn't (always) make you a bad person and it doesn't take the worth from your relationship. (i'm only talking for my ex here, some situations are completely different) anyway, he can still be considered my best friend even if i don't use that option for whatever reason. i also believe that my love is unconditional and i have recently learned how to love from a distance. now some will say that i hold on to my exes like roses pressed in a journal. that's not exactly the case. i just mean it when i say i love you and when you build relationships off of a friendship, there's a lot more responsibility and maturity that comes along with that. sometimes you can't be with a person romantically but if and when you get through the hurt and the pain, if that person was a genuine friend and you have no intention of getting back with them (especially if you are seeing someone else) i don't think you can't be friends. the issue is when you're rushing to be friends again without overcoming the hurt of being more than that.
i used to feel like i owed my friends explanations as to why i kept in contact with my exes but then i realized that some of the people i was explaining to had never been in relationships like mine and had never gone through what i had gone through. (side note, with the exclusion of my daughter's father, i only have and i'm only discussing two legitimate exes). this man, in particular was a huge part of my life and he made a bad decision by cheating on me. period. that's not debatable. now supposedly, i didn't get back with him because i was afraid of what other people thought. i've been thinking about that theory for a while now and i can honestly say that it's bullsh.t i love my friends but they have it wrong, most of the time when it comes to translating my feelings they do but i love them no less. i'm not afraid of what people would think if i got back with someone that cheated on me. the real truth is that the pain was overbearing and overwhelming. i was completely knocked off my feet. and i actually did try to make it work despite what anyone might have thought. i was just in too much pain. i couldn't even see my way out of it. i remember one day in particular i was cutting onions and tears were falling and he told me that he would finish cutting them for me so my eyes could get a break. i looked up at him and said, 'even if i wasn't cutting these onions, i'd still be crying.' he looked at me so hurt and so disappointed that what we had broken was beyond the point of fixing.
i was devastated. (not to say he wasn't but i'm talking about my perspective right now) i cried walking to class. i cried doing laundry. i cried brushing my teeth. i cried putting on my shoes. i cried myself to sleep. i cried when i woke up. i was a mess and not so much because of the physical act of cheating but the lying and the betrayal. nothing made sense, nothing felt real anymore. and when you make someone your hero, it's hard to find out that you're not living in a fairytale. i'll tell you right now though, we didn't end things because i was afraid of what people thought. i'm not. people can't even fathom how amazing of a person he is and how one mistake doesn't change that for me. back then, cheating was the end all, be all obviously even after you make an attempt to work through it, for your ego or out of habit but now i'm really grasping the humanity of others. we make mistakes. we fall down. we make bad decisions but if it's one thing i know beyond a shadow of a doubt, i know that he loves me, maybe more than anyone else on this planet. i would put my life on that. i think knowing that is way bigger than a bad decision. it's way more comforting to any pain that was caused. and i feel like if you know someone loves you in the capacity in which i mentioned, anything is possible, even getting back together. love is about forgiveness and i'm smart enough (now, not then) to know that i shouldn't pick and choose which parts of my love are most convenient for the people that i love. if i would sit here and die for you then i need to learn how to live with you through the good and the bad. i'm not saying be a doormat, i'm just saying that unconditional love is way more spiritual and way more divine than we give it credit for.
even with the forgiveness and not worrying about what anyone has to say, the reason why we're not together is because there are still major trust issues that we haven't decided to work on. part of forgiveness is rebuilding and you can't rebuild before you're ready. i had to heal, i had to learn to believe in love again. i had to step back and wrap my head around what happened. i had to focus on healing and i can say that, whether we ever get back together or not, i learned how to forgive and i'm so proud that i took the time and the space to do that. i am so glad that i didn't force myself to get back with him and pretend i felt things that i didn't. i was grown enough to say 'this hurts' and 'i need out.' i heard someone say that 'men don't know how to say goodbye and women don't know when." learn when to say 'when.'
i'm not saying you should hold on to your exes like pressed roses in journals but i am saying that we're human and a part of recognizing that is knowing that our youth is puzzling. you will make mistakes and so will other people. that doesn't always mean that you cross them out of your life. some people will do more good than harm, but when you're in the midst of that harm, it definitely clouds your sense of ratio. but despite that, i have two legitimate exes and at one point, i'm pretty sure i hated them. but now looking back, bruised but not broken, they were amazing people who made one significant bad decision. it doesn't take away from the years of friendship and just because we don't want to be together, that doesn't mean that we can't find a cordial middle ground. that's what love is - knowing your boundaries and still knowing when to leap.
No comments:
Post a Comment