I Was In Love

And I’m furious.

Not just at what was done to me, but at myself for allowing it. The control. The bullying. The gaslighting. The theft. The abuse. The manipulation. The isolation.

All of it.

I’m a reasonably intelligent woman. I’ve lived a long, interesting life. I’ve traveled alone, built things from nothing, made difficult decisions, survived disappointments, and figured my way out of more than a few goddamn messes.

So how in the hell did I let someone do that to me?

I’ve been asking myself that question.

And the answer, as embarrassing and painfully simple as it sounds, is that I was in love.

There it is.

I was in love.

And love, apparently, can turn an otherwise sensible woman into an Olympic-level excuse maker.

I explained away things I would have recognized immediately in someone else’s relationship. I forgave what should not have been forgiven. I questioned my own judgment when it was someone else’s behavior that needed examining.

I kept looking for the person I loved.

Surely that person was still in there somewhere.

Underneath the cruelty. Underneath the manipulation. Underneath the endless confusion of being told that what I knew had happened hadn’t happened at all.

I wasn’t stupid.

I was trusting.

And trust, when it’s attached to the wrong person, can become a rather expensive habit.

I’m not particularly interested in pretending I had no agency. I did. There were moments when I could have walked away. Moments when my instincts were practically standing on the kitchen table screaming at me.

And I stayed.

That’s the part I’m having trouble forgiving.

Not that I loved someone.

But that I gradually learned to distrust myself in order to keep loving them.

I made concessions I never imagined making. I tolerated behavior that violated everything I believed about dignity, independence, kindness, and respect.

And somewhere along the way, I began negotiating away little pieces of myself.

One compromise at a time.

Until I barely recognized the woman doing the negotiating.

There is grief in that realization. Terrible grief.

For the time. For the trust. For the money. For the peace I surrendered. For all those perfectly lovely ordinary days that might have been spent reading a book, writing, watching the birds, wandering through the woods, or simply enjoying my own company instead of trying to make sense of someone else’s cruelty.

But I refuse to make my capacity for love the villain of this story.

I loved.

That was not the crime.

The control was. The bullying was. The manipulation and gaslighting were.

And I will not accept responsibility for another person’s choices simply because I was foolish enough to believe that love might inspire better ones.

At 76, I’m becoming rather particular about who gets access to me.

My home. My time. My affection. My peace.

I’ve spent enough years accommodating other people’s damage. I’m no longer interested in being anyone’s emotional rehabilitation center.

I still believe in love.

I still believe in generosity, forgiveness, tenderness, and the extraordinary possibility of two people finding comfort in one another.

What I no longer believe is that love requires me to endure mistreatment.

And I am trying, with varying degrees of success, to extend some of that same generosity to the woman I was.

The woman who stayed.

The woman who believed.

The woman who kept trusting.

She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t without intelligence or judgment. She was a human being who loved someone and wanted that love to be real and good.

I wish she’d left sooner.

God, how I wish she’d left sooner.

But I’m not going to spend whatever years I have left punishing her for the years she couldn’t find her way out.

She’s been through enough.

And let me be perfectly clear about something.

The love is dead and buried.

I’m not mourning the loss of that relationship or secretly wishing for another chance. I’m not standing over its grave with flowers, wondering what might have been.

I’ve buried it.

What I’m reckoning with now is what it cost me.

The years. The trust. The independence I compromised. The peace I surrendered. The woman I allowed myself to become while trying to love someone who was hurting me.

I don’t want the love back.

I have myself back.

She’s a little older. A hell of a lot wiser. Occasionally furious.

But she’s here.

And this time, she’s staying.