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I stayed in my marriage for too long. I stayed until all of my love subsided into a dutiful and abiding resentment that suffocated me with its force. My divorce liberated me from that feeling of compression, but it also deeply unhinged my sense of loneliness.
At first, the pain was strangely comforting because my suffering felt as strong as the feelings I once had when I was in love. So I let that sadness hug me hard and willfully, holding onto me seductively, I offered it no resistance. Maybe I still wanted to be a part of something larger than myself, since I'd lost that feeling of having found all the beauty of the world in one person. I held on to the suffering because it still kept me belonging to something bigger than just me, which made it seem important and honest and worthwhile. I already knew the tempo and pattern of how to be in a bad relationship. Holding onto the sad allowed me to keep myself in that comfortable realm of dissatisfaction, feeling like we were still involved without having to actually be involved. The divorce was hard. The loneliness of being fully alone was unyielding and exhausting. I could leave my marriage but I couldn't just walk away from the feelings I had about it. I didn't want to stay together but I didn't know how to be fully alone.

I was still in love when I left. In love and not in love at the same time. The parade of what ifs and if only's marched on well longer then the emotional coronation should have because of that indecision. It would have been easier to resent, but I couldn't let go of sad long enough to let anger come and then go as part of the hideous pattern of healing. So I stayed sad, but hopeful. My hope about the ability of others to change was the least resourceful emotion I've ever had and it took me a long time to trust my own optimism again after seeing how deeply it kept me locked into the pattern of wondering about things where the answers should have all been very clear. A leopard can't change his spots. People are who they are. Blah blah blah. It took me a while to see that hope can be ok. It just needs to be properly directed. I needed to be hopeful about me, not hopeful about the love in this relationship resurrecting itself. I needed to think of myself as something separate from this relationship now and that was the problem. I didn't know how to think of just myself, someone separate and independent from this fractured relationship. Everything I held onto,

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