A Swift Kick & A Band-Aid

Lessons Learned

Everyone always says 'everything happens for a reason' but it is rare that we ever know what that reason is. I personally find myself asking 'why?' or 'what is this for?' all of the damn time (no, not 'why me?' - that's a whole different question). The biggest things I took from my trip to Cali - despite all of the pain - were answers to two major whys that I have struggled to answer for the last couple of years.

There have been two men in my life that I can honestly say I loved differently than I have loved anyone else to come into my life. One of the common themes between them was the fact that I didn't get along with their mothers. XM2's mother used to judge me, make rude comments, and generally never gave me a chance because of the reality she wished her son were living instead of a life with me. XM3's mother never did anything to indicate she didn't like me, she just behaved badly toward me. She would refuse to talk to me, she would ignore my presence in a room, she pretended that I wasn't real. Both XM2 and XM3 told me I was imagining it all, that I should stop making myself a victim when there was no attack. Naturally it caused conflict, both relationships ended, and I was left not understanding why I had been put in those situations.

Experiencing the pain these women inflicted with their misdeeds and their sons inflicted with their abadonment of my emotions made me see nothing but injustice and well up with anger.

Until now...

Now I see that they were lessons to teach me two things:
1) I do not need the world to work according to plan or for people to behave perfectly. I need those that I love to stand beside me through the painful moments. I need recognition from them that something has gone wrong. I have the strength to bear anything placed upon me, but it is much easier to smile doing it when someone else is there to touch your hand and say, "I know, I see it too."

2) How a person behaves is not always who a person is. I wanted to label XM3's mother as a selfish, rude person but I can't honestly say I believe that she is, at her core, those negative things. I can't even believe that she is malicious. She may be oblivious to how she impacts others, but she is not mean...despite how it felt in the moments I spent with her...

The pain was great, the road was long, but the lessons were learned. And I can finally stop asking myself why I was meant to experience what these women brought into my life.

Posted by Princess Cat at January 4, 2006 01:48 PM @ 01:48 PM in Drama // Permalink | TrackBack