Glory. I have a problem. As you can see, I made a Part 1 to Part 5 of my series. That's because I started writing this post last night (last night a couple of weeks ago when I actually first wrote this post) and it kept getting longer and longer without getting to my second point. So there's going to be a separate post for the second point of this part of my series. Confusing, no? Just bear with me, I'm doing the best that I can.
So here we go:
Okay, so let's just get this out of the way. While I was outlining this series and got to this idea, all I could think of (and all I CAN think of when I look at it) is this video. So watch the video, enjoy the adorable little girl, and then come back to the post.
Cool.
So what I'm talking about in this post is a tough one. I'm going to address two major issues that you may be struggling with right now.
1- You can't worry about (or take care of) him anymore.
2- You have to worry about (and take care of) you.
Diving right in.
Maybe this isn't what it's like for everyone, but this is how it was for me at the beginning of all of this. I was still in love with my ex and I was so accustomed to being there for him- loving him, supporting him, etc. -that I had a really hard time shutting off the part of my brain that was dedicated to caring for him. And you have to understand, when he was arrested, I had just spent the last few months giving everything that I had to him.
In my infamous Part 2 post, I talked about the reasons that we broke our engagement off the first time (though I don't seem to have specifically said that that's what ended up happening). I mentioned that he sought help through counseling and such.
But what I didn't mention is that I was with him every step of the way.
After everything came to a head, he left for a few days to clear his head at his family's house. While he was gone, I was a wreck. And I prayed a ton and counseled with my parents, my sister, and my best friend. I didn't know how to respond. Half of me wanted to yell at him as soon as he got back, but the other half of me just wanted to give him a huge hug and tell him that it was all okay (which it obviously wasn't, but abuse brain, you know?) The day that he got home was a Sunday, and during sacrament meeting I felt prompted to write a list of everything that was so incredibly not okay about how he had been treating me over the past few months.
When he got back that night, he was basically despondent. He seemed to feel SO bad for everything that he had done to me. We talked and even though it was hard because he was so miserable already, I gave him the engagement ring back and read my list off to him. I told him that I didn't know if there was any saving our relationship. But I also told him that I was there for him, as a friend only, to help him through whatever he was going through.
I went to counseling with him the first few times and just sat in the waiting room. I would wait out in the hall while he met with the bishop. I would sit on his couch with him laying with his head on my lap- in silence -for hours. I would just sit and play with his hair or sometimes even sing to him until he fell asleep and then I would just slip out and go back to my apartment to do homework.
He was crying constantly, struggled to eat and sleep, and was just... fragile. I spent any time that I wasn't in class or at work taking care of him. I gave him all of my time and energy while I was in the midst of my own heartbreak. And he's the one that broke my heart! I myself was struggling to eat and sleep, and I was really hurting. But I took care of him anyway because I loved him. Because it felt like the right thing to do at the time (see this past post). And it was completely draining for me.
Again, after a couple of months, things did seem to have improved drastically. He got a hold of his emotions, was out and doing things again, and was treating me much, MUCH better.
We had actually had just re-posted that we were engaged a few days before he was arrested.
One of my very first thoughts when the detectives came and told me the news was that he needed his depression meds. My gut reaction to learning that the man that I loved- that I had given literally my all to -had committed a felony (with me as the primary victim) was concern for him. When the police left to go investigate his apartment, I pleaded with them to grab his depression medicine out of his backpack so that he would have it in jail.
When court dates came up, I was always trying to make sure that he would have people there for him. I would text his friends to see if they were going to his hearings. I never went, but I made sure that someone was there for him.
I prayed for him and his family every single day for months and months.
I wanted to be at his baptism someday since I knew that he would almost certainly be excommunicated.
I was so thoroughly wrapped up in my ex that I was missing so much of the big picture. I wasn't allowing myself to fully understand all that he had done to me. I was preventing myself from seeing that he had abused me in so many ways. I didn't allow myself to recognize how deeply he had hurt me.
And because of that, I couldn't really begin recovering properly because I was still seeing him as my sweet fiance and not as the man who had ruined my life. I needed to put down the rose-colored glasses and face up to who he really is. Only then could I start loving myself again.
To sum it all up, I was focusing on him when I really needed to focus on me.
The thing is, he's not my responsibility anymore. It's not up to me to make sure that he's happy, healthy, taken care of. And it's unhealthy for me to worry about those things.
People kept telling me that I needed to stop worrying about him so that I could move on and heal. But I couldn't seem to do it.
But this is me telling you to stop worrying about him. First of all, he hurt you and it's not fair for you to worry so much about him when he didn't love you enough not to hurt you.
But also, he's not alone in this. I promise he's not. He still has friends and family members that are there for him. You really aren't the only person that has ever cared about (and for) your ex.
You need to pass him back to those people.
If your situation involved the law, he probably also has a probation officer and counselors that are there to help him get straight.
And most importantly, he has God.
It's hard because you're afraid that if you react a certain way or do certain things, it's only going to push him farther down his dark path. And I hate to say it, but maybe it will. I wonder sometimes if my ex knows about my blog. If he knows that I talk about all of the ways that he screwed my life up. And if he does know about it, what does he think? Is it just pushing him further into despair? Into a place where it will be even harder to crawl out of the hole that he's dug for himself? And well, I don't know.
But I do know that it's not my job to protect him anymore. I try not to simply bad-talk him or anything, but I do share what happened as honestly as I can. And I don't let myself feel bad about it because I continue to feel that blogging is something that I am supposed to do and I've seen it help a lot of people. And I don't let myself feel bad because we don't talk about things like this enough. If we're too afraid of how the perpetrator will take what we say, then we'll all continue to feel alone because we'll all continue to bottle it all up. I would never want to intentionally make it harder for my ex to change, but I also can't really worry about it at this point.
Taking a quick detour away from concern about love and support, it's also not up to you to worry about whether your ex receives the proper repercussions for his actions. I wasn't in charge of my ex's sentencing. I did what I could to help with the investigation so that they would have all of the facts, but the moment that he was sentenced, I had to leave him in the hands of the law.
If your situation didn't include the law, this still applies. I've talked to people who eventually got out of abusive situations and I see a common theme in the majority of them. They have been left feeling broken and weak, but then they watch their ex seeming to be just fine (I talk about that more here). Oftentimes the ex seems to simply move on with their lives like nothing happened. They seem happy and successful and it doesn't seem right. If they don't receive consequences for their actions, what's to stop them from doing it all again?
But again, there is really only so much that you can do about that, and so obsessing about what will happen to them in the future isn't going to do you any good. I can't worry about whether my ex is feeling the full weight of his actions or not. If he does he does, and if he doesn't, well, that has more to do with him than it has to do with me. The hardest part about this, I think, is worrying that he'll go on to hurt someone else in the future if he doesn't change. But I can't follow him around for the rest of my life trying to make sure that he has changed. I have to trust that Heavenly Father is on top of it all and that He will help other women just as He has helped me.
As much as it still pains me to say it, what happens to my ex happens. It's not my job to make things better for him. In fact, sugar-coating and supporting would only make him less likely to see how deeply wrong all of the things that he's done are. Unfortunately, if he's going to come out of this, he needs to really understand the depth of his actions. He needs to feel the pain of them so that he can fully recover, repent, rehabilitate; you name it. Babying him doesn't help him and it doesn't help me either. Because it's just a continuation of the mindset that his happiness is more important than mine. Because that's what abuse does to you. Everything is about him and you don't matter.
But you do matter. You absolutely do. You matter just as much to God as your ex does. And because of that, Heavenly Father wants you to take care of you now. And you know what? Because your ex is just as loved as you are, He'll do all that he can to take care of him too. It's not you who should be worrying about him anymore. Leave that to Heavenly Father.
Now is the time to focus on your own healing. Do YOU have the love and support that you need? Are you eating and sleeping? Do you need someone to sit with you in silence for a while, maybe playing with your hair?
It's time to leave him behind. I'm not saying that you should hate him, but you need to let him go. You need to not think about him. You need to not worry about him. You need to remember that Heavenly Father loves him enough to take care of him. But more importantly, you need to remember that Heavenly Father loves YOU enough that He wants to take care of YOU.
But that's a lot harder to do when you won't let yourself move on and heal. He can only help you so much if you are still so focused on your ex that you have no room for yourself. You need help as much as- and probably more than -your ex.
So let him go. Stop worrying about him. What happens to him isn't up to you anymore. It never really was. He chose to do what he did. Yes, mental health and addiction and such may play into it, but he still had to choose. And he chose to forfeit the right to your love and support when he decided that hurting you to get what he wanted was more important than making sure that you had his love and support in return.
He'll be taken care of. Whether he straightens up or not is ultimately up to him, not you. So leave it to him and leave it to God and start worrying about yourself for once instead. You deserve it.
(To be continued...)
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