The World As I Know It

The world as I know it has ended.  And, to be perfectly honest, I have been quite busy mourning it's loss.  I know that it wasn't "real", but at least in my mind, I was going to have the perfect and wonderful marriage.  I was going to grow old in the contentment of knowing that I was treasured.  I've heard the words sometimes.  Usually to try to cause me to try one more time.  The words of how I am pretty.  Or unique.  But, they would fall on deaf ears now (not that I would be hearing them except for in the context of a fight and what he thought I was when we met).  The ears of my heart have learned what the ears on my head did not want to believe.  I am not the one that brings him joy.  I am not the person who lifts his heart by who I am.  Oh, believe me, I know him well enough that I can DO things that lift him up, but he doesn't just find pleasure in me.  In my being.  And, while I have tried for these last years to kindle a real and lasting relationship, I have found that it is as if there was a nuclear bomb and the world as I wanted to know it doesn't even exist anymore.  It is gone.  I have to make it in a new world.  With a new reality.
I'm learning that I can.  That I will.  Sometimes I am angry with him, mostly I just feel sorry for him.  And, then I'm angry.  And then I'm very hurt.  The hurt always remains.  Like a cloak.  Good thing, because maybe it will keep me warm from the fear that engulfs me.  He scares me.  Because he has a power to cause me to keep on going in a direction that I should no longer travel.  I need to travel in reality.  Though I get scared.  Though I keep on giving up.  Though it is uncomfortable.  I need to travel a bit at a time in a way that will be pleasing in the years to come.  In a way that brings healing over time.  In a way that brings peace and love and forgiveness.  This direction of simply faking it.  Of acting like I have a great marriage while he treats me as someone who is not worthy of him.  It is lethal.  It will destroy me.  I know it because it almost did.
I told him the world was changing.  He didn't believe me because he knows that he has always been able to "smooth things over" before.  He has been allowed, by me, unfortunately, to behave badly, to hurt me and to just keep living in relative comfort.  He uses guilt with me because I have allowed it.  Frankly, it's hard NOT to allow it.  Because of who I am.  He knows that at the core of who I am I will work my butt of to make things right.  I will give my all.  But, not for fake.  It turns out I learned something about myself.  I have a definite line.  I will give and give and give for those I love.  I will work.  I will sacrifice.  But, if over time, a long time, because I am patient, I learn that really I'm just being used, I will step back and reevaluate.  I have been used.  I am reevaluating.  Step by step.  Inch by inch.  But I am making decisions so that I won't continue to move in this unhealthy, detrimental cycle.  It never gets us anywhere.  Except back to another bad beginning.  Continuing to do the same things in the same way and expecting something different means I'm stupid.  And, I'm not.  So, I have to back off.  I have to ask for change.  Slowly.
I have to work for real.  Have to give.  Have to write.  Have to breathe.  Have to dream.  Have to know that God is my provider.  That He holds me.  Just like I am.  And I have to have the time to do that.  With people who see me.  Who know me.  Who care that I am whole.  And yes, even happy.
So, the world as I know it has changed forever.  And I'm not going back to the dangerous bombed out shell.  I am heading to new and safer lands.  By grace.