Friday, December 09, 2011

You don't bring me flowers any more

Dear Portia,

I meant it when I said it. I really did.

I meant it when I said that I loved you. I meant it when I said I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. I meant it when I said that I would buy you a house. I meant it when I said I would take you on that honeymoon you always wanted. I meant it sincerely and I wanted to do it right up until you decided you couldn't take it any more.  Couldn't take me anymore.

My part in the end of our marriage had at a lot of its core my issues as an adult child of an alcoholic.  By the time you got to really know me, you felt like you had married a stranger.  We couldn't discuss trimming a Christmas tree without it turning into World War III because, in part, of my defensiveness.  I tried very hard to please you (as a people pleaser is wont to do) and bred resentment in myself.  I harmed you many, many times.

One of the things we do in ACA is we make a list of the people whom we have harmed and we have to figure out how to make amends to them if at all possible.  I cannot change our outcome.  But I still remember the things I said to you, the promises I made. And so, while none of it will come true in the way that I had hoped back when I said the things I said, I have found a way, through the settlement that we reached on the money, to make a lot of it happen.

I was responsible for you being able to buy a house, thanks to an early dispersal of some of the money.  And you'll be able to take a nice vacation with what you will get over the remaining time.  And because of the grandchild we have custody of, you'll be in my life for years whether I want you to be or not.

It's not what I wanted and it's not what you wanted.  But I hope that from what is now possible it will do.



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