Finding and Giving Forgiveness

What does it mean to forgive? Is forgiveness an action or an emotion? Is it both? Does one need to repent to be forgiven? What if the waters of the relationship are muddy? Who apologizes when both are wrong in their own ways? How can one apologize when completely unsure of what he did wrong?

Perhaps it's just a reaction to my new found singleness, but I want my old life back. I never had the chance to mourn it, I never had time to process exactly what happened to it. It seems I suppressed all those emotions for the last three years and now they are all bubbling up and overwhelming me.

I want to reach out to her. I know it sounds crazy, but hindsight and new information completely shifts how I see the events of our breakup. She was consumed by mental illness. Undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. At the time I told her I suspected it, but she recoiled and lashed out in denial. She refused evaluation. She refused help. But a year or so back the topic came up in a conversation with my daughter about it. "Yeah, Mom's been diagnosed with that."

Part of me wants to say "I told you so", part of me is angry that my marriage was destroyed by something treatable. Difficult definitely, but treatable. It is absurd to break up a family over an illness. I loved her immensely and wanted her best. I fought and struggled while she calmly walked away, seemingly euphoric and unaware of her reckless choices. I still love her, despite my attempt to move on with someone else. Try as I might, I could not conjure any feelings in my last relationship. It didn't help that that partner was also mentally ill, especially since her illness came with violence and aggression.

I spent twenty years with someone. Five relatively stable, ten relatively unstable, four very much unstable, and the final year in absolute hell. I was a wreck at the end. I gave up and gave in to a love-bomber. I believed this new relationship was everything I lacked in the previous one. It didn't take long for me to realize the mistake. I suffered another three years with someone extremely unstable and completely unable to take responsibility for her own health or behavior. Now I am free, but alone, and staring back at years stolen.

Growing up with someone casts a cloud over your judgement of their health. We met at a very young age and were practically inseparable. I can't say she was ever stable, but we were teenagers, and honestly, teenage life is one of ups and downs. I don't think it was possible to see her illness then, it just became a part of "her".

I believed I knew the real her, but then I witnessed the depression. When the swing came back I was just happy to see her out of bed and enjoying something again. It never occurred to me that she was cycling through mood states. She just seemed happy again. So many hobbies. So many new clothing styles. Such a variety of musical tastes. She was an adventure. But then she'd be in bed again. Years of life were consumed.

I tried to keep up. I struggled to support us and take care of everything she was unable to deal with. The house got messier and messier. Money was always tight. But that was life. I just needed to encourage her, eventually she would get up and get to work. And work she did, just never at anything productive. She was a Renaissance woman, and the clutter and dirt in her home showed it. Make soap? Let's make it a business! Get a few chickens? Let's start a meat breeding program and end up with 74 at one time! Let's get rabbits too! Learn to crochet? Let's buy hundreds of skeins of yarn and fill a room! Today I'm a country girl, next month I'll be a hippie and stop shaving or wearing makeup, then next I might just start wearing short shorts and tank tops and learning to wear makeup. Her wardrobe looked like an archeology dig of various fashions, nothing was ever mixed in with the old, the new just formed a new layer.

Nothing was ever half hearted once she decided she wanted to pursue it. Every project was meticulously planned and researched. No stone was left unturned. Of course this meant every project cost way more than it needed to, because no possibility of failure was allowed. Everything had to be successful. Of course with the mood cycles came the many unfinished projects; not to mention all the ones planned into oblivion, or simply never started despite the investment of hours and hours of time and whatever money was available. With the "successful" projects she would claim grandiose accomplishments. She was simply the best at everything she put her mind to.

I believed her. I believed in everything she said or did. I sacrificed my time, my money, my interests, my emotions, everything, just to see her happy for whatever short time she hyper focused on some new thing. It's only in hindsight that I see how average she was. There is no shame in average of course, but part of me thinks she felt shame and overcompensated in her enthusiasm to cover that shame.

The final few years was a total split from reality. I changed jobs and within six months she wanted my job. Conflicts came. Jealousy and resentment built. Money troubles persisted. Her mind changed a dozen times in four years. The adventure was a blur, or really a smudge, or a haze. I had some of my best memories in those years, balanced with a giant ball of anxiety. She carpet-bombed our marriage those final years. I read my journal from that time and I can't even identify who that person was. I just wanted her happiness, everything else be damned.

It's hard to say if her treatment was abuse or not, especially at the end. It certainly left me a shell of a human. The coldness and quickness of her disposal left me thinking I was a sociopath, a victim, a martyr, an abuser, a... my head spins. She took every one of her behaviors and projected them onto me. Every emotionally unstable moment was somehow my fault. I was to shut up and let her do what she wanted, lest I trip her into another episode. I felt as though a pillow was put over my face and I was being told to shush and just let it happen.

Yet I also felt as though she was keenly aware of what she had done to me, and she was leaving to save me. She told me I could find someone better. She told me I was a great man, a good father. She never denied that I loved her (despite also claiming I was abusing her). She wanted to break my love. She was glad when one day she saw I wasn't wearing my wedding ring, "I'm glad your getting comfortable with the idea of us not being together." Her emotions were always so calm, unless I brought up reconciliation, that brought out so many faces that I lost track.

Eventually I broke. Not my love, but my spirit. I couldn't fight it anymore. The whiplash of hot-cold, kind-evil, depressed-manic, happy-angry, and so many ups and downs finally destroyed my determination. Someone else moved in on the carrion that was my heart and lied me into giving in to her desire to break up the relationship. I thought "this is the affection, the love, the generosity that I've been missing." A broken heart is blind. I ignored or didn't see every red flag waving wildly in the breeze. That is my deepest regret and I am so glad to be out of that mistake.

My wife was sick, but I didn't push hard enough for her health. She was sick, but I lashed out in reaction instead of stepping back and seeing the whole picture. She was sick, but I allowed her to convince me I had created the sickness and everything that came with it, paralyzing me with a guilty conscience and turning me into a coward who shut down under the oppression of her illness.

I don't see her as her behaviors. She has a sickness. She is culpable but not fully in control. At the time I questioned if she was evil or just ill. I suspected ill, but I treated her as evil because I hurt so much. It's a complex circumstance to navigate, but I want to do it with her. We were both so wrong, but neither would confess, and neither would forgive. I want to own my part and forgive her of hers.

Is that possible?

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S. D. G.

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