Choosing My Life

There are many ways I can live happily, I know that now, and it is not the place I live, what is in it, or where it is. Or, even who is in my life that effects that happiness. My future happiness will be effected by how I choose to live. From this point on in my life, I really want to make choices, knowing that I made a decison because it was the best I could do at the time, not because it was the easier one.

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A thought process that started when I wrote a response to an email from a friend. Making good choices. Something that has become very important to me. Especially the last thought in the last sentence......making a choice because it is the best choice, not because it is easier......

Many times throughout my life, I have ended up making choices, by not making them. By not doing, by procrastinating on the hard stuff, thus, the choice was made for me. I have a long way to grow, but it is my hope for myself, for becoming a better me, that I learn to make those choices no matter how difficult, no matter how unsavory they may feel, because they are the best for me, and anyone else effected by my choices.

I told my children yesterday, that the paperwork has been filed, that the Divorce process has truly started. I apologized to them, for breaking up our family, the family they have grown up with. Both of them did not accept my apology. They did not think one was needed. They both have the hope, that in the future, we will all live happier more fulfilling lives now. These last few years, have taken their toll on all four of us. I have seen it, lived it, and let it go on for way too long.

I can look back over the years, and know now, that my children did witness some aspects of our marital relationship that were loving, and honest. But I have to also face the fact, that most of the years of their lives, they witnessed the opposite. My hopes and dreams for them is that they will have learned to see that a loving relationship does not have to be like the one they have witnessed. I believe they both know it takes the two people involved working together to succeed, as well as it takes two to fail. I have not tried to gloss over, or hide my own failings, they know that. They each love their father in the only way they can, my hope is that as they each become adults, the relationship they have with him will grow into one of trust and friendship, that it moves beyond just father/child love.

The relationships they seemed more unsure of were those with their father's extended family. They each have their favorite relatives, they each have also seen how easily that family judges others and finds them wanting. Yet, in turn, these two loves of my life, also judge the paternal side of their extended family, because of that very judging. One of the conundrums of being human? Anyway, Mr. Son expressed some doubts about the future of those relations. The only advice I could give him, was to continue to try to view them all in a loving and open-minded way, to continue to visit with them, when they visited his father, to continue just being himself. They do love him, many feel disappointed that he has not exploited his inborn talents and intelligence, but they do love him for who he is. I want him to remember that.

Mr. Son, and I ended up conversing for several hours last night, on a variety of topics....we always ramble away on many subjects, that are somehow all interconnected in a way that may only make sense to us. But, during our rambles, he did profess that he loves his father, knows that his father loves him. Knows that they each have disappointed the other. Mr. Son, stated that he has much to thank his father for. Having a strong work ethic was one....he then embellished that statement with..."Yes, Mom, I know you don't see that here at home, but when I am working for someone else, they do get my very best." I knew that, I always have, it has been his form of 'rebellion' against us as his parents to appear lazy and unwilling to work along beside us. But, I have seen his dedication to his employers, I have always known he has it in him. He also said he has his father to thank, for his feeling of self-reliance, he has learned much from him over the years, and feels as if he can do anything, or at least feel confident in making the attempt. I am happy that he can see positives in a relationship that has been so very strained for many years.

Mr. Son, also articulated a feeling, that I am not sure I ever truly understood. In the past two years, since he has lived away from home, he rarely made home visits when his father was awake, he always appeared late at night, or when he knew he would not be home. More rarely, he would visit when I was not home, but his father was. I always attributed it to the sadness in the very air of our home. I spent so many months unable to come out from behind my fog of melancholy that I could not see beyond it. But, my loving, perceptive son said, there was more than sadness, there was anger, so much anger filling the atmosphere of our home, and he had a very hard time dealing with that.

Unspoken anger, unspoken sadness, unspoken anguish, unspoken pain, unhealed wounds. The very reasons, a marriage has ended. It was time, well-past time.

A choice that was postponed too long, but finally made. A choice that may be end up being one of the more loving I have ever made.

I have that hope.