Found a Love Letter to myself

I had a brilliant idea for a new blog. Will share later, but the crux of this is that I had the brilliant idea of going to my oldest page on my gmail and troll for things I'd written that I had forgotten about in the sound and the fury of college. On the second page of emails I found this and thought some thing I think with alarming regularity about myself:

WHAT THE FUCK, EDA? Where did this come from?

Judging from the title of the email, it was titled:

Counting My Blessings.

Until you have had someone you love strip you of your dignity, and fill you with pervasive doubt, you could not understand the dizzying addiction of bad relationships.

The first six months is the high you chase for the rest of the relationship. It is a toxic mix of unexpected sexy phone calls, animalistic sex and a fierce possessiveness that makes you feel special in a way that only an overdose of hormones can.

Then, as the relationship rots, you twist and prune yourself to please an angry god. Any words of praise are like a salty cracker in the desert, the first few moments are ecstasy then you realize there is no water and you dry up inside. Like any progressively degenerative drug, bad love will deprive you of your family, your friends, and eventually your soul.

An experience like that stays with you. It left me with sincere distaste for love films. But I can say with unerring truth that I am truly thankful that my first marriage was an abusive one. I would have never chosen to live if I had not been pressed so harshly.

When I see a woman clutching rags of clothing to her body and sobbing, I know her pain. I know that incredible, withering hopelessness, when your fondest wish is to dissipate with the force of your sobbing. There are different stimuli for this state, but the scorched emotional landscape you become after is familiar ground for anyone who has been so scoured by life.  

If I had not had the experience of being chased through my home by a crazed spouse; if I had not been pinned against the bed like a bug and bathed in the full force of his fury; I would never have woken up. My depressing self-derision would have kept me living a half-life, where I never attempted anything. My ex-husband woke me like the bracing slap of a bucket of cold water being tossed on me.

In that moment, when I truly believed he would kill me, it was a thunderclap in my soul. I had made a decision and it was to survive. I had not made that decision yet in my life and until I actually believed that I was going to lose my life, I didn’t want it. I would have never returned to college, or have had the courage to travel to Europe on my own resources without having the experience of a bad marriage.

Now, I don’t let life swish by me and dole out what it wishes. I crouch behind an armchair, spring on its back and throttle it for all I’m worth.  I do everything with ferocity, because I still don’t believe I am getting away with it.

I am awake.

I feel the passage of time all around me and I am committed to not wasting any more time on useless emotional flagellation. I know one thing and cling to it desperately:

things rust;

memories fade;

just live.