The Best of Me

I've been told I ended this post with a really reflective couple of lines that I'm not sure fully sunk in when I wrote them.  Often I'm writing to process and the thoughts that come out on the page are thoughts that then toss and turn in my head in the hours and days that follow.  I like the metaphor of a puzzle which I know I have used in the past.  My mind just keeps picking up pieces and each time I look at them, I see something different - sometimes it's enough to make sense of where it goes, sometimes it gets put back in the pile to pick up once again at another time after I have reviewed more pieces.

But back to Thursday night's thought, I was reveling in the greater bandwidth I have now and recognizing that the woman my ex-husband knew didn't have that bandwidth.  On a very practical level, what that means is that he never got the best version of me.  The version he got was drained and restrained.  It was a smaller version of me with less joy and less energy.

On a gut level, this realization that he never got the best of me, just fills me with sadness.  Maybe it's that grace coming out again.  As angry as I am at him and as much as he created this situation himself, I still wish he could have experienced the best of me and I want him to be able to experience the best of others in the future.

On a rational level, it's a huge reminder that you get out of relationships what you put into them.  When you are a positive force on someone else's life, it leaves them with the bandwidth to be a positive force on your life.  That's no guarantee everyone will choose or have the capacity to be that positive force, but it's almost guaranteed not to happen, if you aren't making that choice yourself first.

And then there is the back of my brain thought that wonders how I could have reacted better, whether there is anything I could have done to change the course of that trajectory.  It's easy to sit back and blame him for draining my energy and not leaving space for me in the relationship.  But maybe I could have done more to counter that.  Although, maybe that would have pushed him away and us to the end faster.  I do think it was my own growth in learning how to set better boundaries and communicate that played a role in the end.