Awake

This is the first weekday morning I've had without my husband around.  With the kids sleeping in.  It is gloriously relaxing.  Quiet on a cloudy day.  I have so many things to do, but I have simply been enjoying the stillness.  Reading.  Being still.  Thinking.  Now, it's about time to throw open the curtains and welcome the day. 
I am so thankful to have been brought this far in life.  To have been carried and blessed.  It's easy to thank God for his goodness.  For his kindnesses.  He has been enough in the midst of my life. 
My childhood was more than difficult.  Yesterday, in church, the pastor was talking about wounds and how other people bump into them but don't cause them.  This is what my husband has always blamed.  He seems to think that since I had a difficult childhood that I should be appreciative of what he offers me.  He has often said that at least he's not like my father.  But the wounds which he is "bumping into" were created by him.  I spent a lot of time before I was married dealing with those older wounds.  and, I have always been open about them being there.  I know that he has wounds too.  From his past and from me.  His past....his childhood....created someone who does not know how to get close.  Someone who guilts instead of communicating.  It took me years to say to him that he ALSO has wounds.  He also has difficult stuff.  But, yesterday, when the pastor was talking, Iknew that it would again make my husband think, "yes, it's her past."  My past I can talk about.  My past wounds have scabs and scars.  They are not raw.  It is the wounds he has inflicted that are open and painful.  But he can never see that.  He is the good one.  He is not one of "those" people.  He is committed.  These are the things he thinks of himself.  Unless I speak to him.  Then he cries and says how bad he is and goes on....but it's just so the tables turn and it becomes about him again.  Becomes about what he has had to put up with. 
I am awake in many ways this morning.  And I choose the truth.  NO, things are not all his fault.  However, he has never been able to hear me or see me.  He can't because if he did he would have responsibility to assume and that would tear down his perfection.  He uses, not loves.  He expects not encourages. 
I hear what they are saying in church.  I know about forgiveness.  I understand it to the core of my being.  How to forgive the hardest things.  I've done that.  I get it to my soul.  But what I will never even try to make others understand is that this isn't about whether to forgive, it is about what to do to keep it from perpetuating in the future.  It is about how to stop the behavior.  I have really tried.  I have put my heart on the line.  I did what I could.  Now, I need to let God do what He does.  By holding on, I could keep that from happening. 
I am sad that I am not the woman he has tried to construct.  Sorry that who I am could not enchant him and draw him.  But, I'm not sad enough to give the woman that I really am up.  Asking me to destroy her so that he can be selfish and unkind is wrong.  Asking me to be less than who I am supposed to be and to be humiliated is wrong.  And, again, I could be all off in what I believe, but this is where I am.  I have given twenty years to the idea that I should make myself over in order to keep him happy and satisfied.  There really was no point.  It didn't work.  There was always something more.  Always some way I was failing. 
No more sleepwalking.  I want to be awake in my own life.  Living it.  Experiencing it. 
Awake.  For this new day.  One at a time.  And today holds much promise.  I will embrace it and live it awake.  I will live it real.  True to who I was made to be.