Ready for what

 

Imagine growing up in a large, relatively sheltered family.

You move a lot, go to a lot of different schools, live in different neighborhoods and towns, but you are always surrounded by people you love and trust.

The advantage of close siblings is always having someone to take a bath with, ride a bike with, play dolls with, even fight with. Your existence is pretty normal and the moving only means more opportunities to meet different people and experience different places.

Then you meet someone outside the family who seems like the most wonderful, incredible person in the world. They grew up in a family that seems very similar to yours in values, but the siblings are sixteen years apart, so they had none of the bonding you took for granted.

You date, are engaged, eventually marry and life couldn't be better. Well, you did have this one dream right at the beginning that you were at a black mass and this person was the anti-priest. It was so vivid and scary, but everyone with big imaginations has bad dreams, especially you, so you pretty much forget all about that.

For the next two or three years life is almost too beautiful to be true. You do everything together. You take the same classes, ride bicycles together, head up a youth group at church, play tennis, and backgammon and chess and things couldn't be better.

Except that the other person starts wanting to go out alone to take pictures. You feel like something is off, but he says it is you. You don't want to allow him any alone time. You decide he must be right, but it was the sudden changes that made it feel off.

Life moves on, you have children, some by adoption, some by birth and life couldn't be any better, except that there is this nagging feeling that something is not right. He says you are worried about nothing, it is all in your mind. All men go on business trips without their families, work late a lot, have clubs and interests that do not include their wives or children. You think that is probably true, it must be you that has the problem.

You have a good life, there is enough money, but it seems like the other people you hang out with have more money and there always seems to be more money when he wants to do something than when you or the children do. He says you waste money and you think he must be right.

You are the family everyone admires. They think you are the most involved in church and school and all kinds of extracurricular activities, but there is always a tension, a sense that all is not right. You are sure everyone believes it is your problem.

Three times he packs up and moves out most of his things without you realizing it and tells you only the night before that he is leaving you. He convinces you that it is your fault.

But the third time, you file for divorce and that is when you discover all those feelings you had were valid. There really was more money than you knew. There really were other women. There actually were reasons he didn't want you to go with him. You were not crazy, or paranoid, or bad at managing money. In fact, you did pretty darn good with what you had.

He spends the next twenty years doing the same things to another woman, who doesn't have children and doesn't believe everything is her fault. She eventually divorces him and moves on.

Your life is better than you could ever have imagined it now. Except that after thirty some years of having the wool pulled over your eyes and being manipulated, you are slightly damaged. You don't always trust your own judgement. You have trouble believing anyone really loves you or values you for yourself. 

And now, twenty years later and thanks to the company of one bestest friend who has stuck with you for twelve of those years, you are starting to feel better -- like maybe you are ready to trust and love and believe in yourself again.

You are ready for something. I wonder what it is.