Learning to Forgive

The keyword would be "learning".... and I am doing just that.  This has been a challenging process. It's all trial and error, and asking myself.. How do I do this? and Am I ready to do this? The second question I can answer for sure... Yes I'm ready to forgive my husband.  How? this one is a little tougher.

To say my husband and I have been through a lot in the past 14 years would be an understatement....more like we've been through Hell and back, more than once....and it has been hard.  Alcoholism is NOT funny.  You may laugh at someone who you see drunk acting stupid  every once in a while....on the weekends...at a club... in a bar...whatever.  When you deal with it EVERY day it loses the humor...if there really ever was any.  I don't drink, I've never liked the taste of alcohol....although I  will admit I have gotten horribly drunk once, and puked my guts out the entire night into the next day....Yea...that was fun.  For the life of me I don't get what is so appealing about that....but this of course is my own opinion. I'm not going to get on a soap box about drinking, do what you want because it is of course your life to live. 

So....How do I forgive? Like I said before, trial and error.  I went down the road of getting really, really angry....reducing my husband...a man that I never saw cry (except at my nephews funeral), to a waterfall of tears (twice).  I wanted to hurt him, as bad as he hurt me.  I made him listen to me, to things he said and did. He  denied them at first, told me I was lying. Why the Hell would I make something like that up?  So he listened and he cried and he apologized.....and I still couldn't forgive him. I was still angry and I hated him, and because of that I started to hate myself, the person that I was becoming.  At this point I really had to stop...take a step back and ask myself what I really wanted, no....what I needed.  I needed to find myself, figure out who I was.  This is where I am right now, and it is really challenging.  I don't have all the answers.  I do know that as I find myself, as I discover who I am, as I stop labeling myself as the "wife of an alcoholic".... that it's easier to let go of the past...it's a little easier to let go of the anger. 

My husband, regardless of his addictions.... is still my husband, he's still the father to our four really awesome kids....for that reason he  will always be an important part of my life, and I will always love him.  I'm also confident in saying that one day I will be able to say, "I forgive you," and I'll mean it because I won't be angry anymore. Whether that day will be while he is still here, or after he's gone.....I just don't know....it is still a process and I am still finding myself. It is however getting easier.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury.  ~E.H. Chapin