Grace

It's been more than a year since the separation and I still have grace for him.  I see with clarity the way he drained my energy, dimmed my light, and put a lid on my joy and I still have grace for him.  I've sat in the pain he caused, pain that still shows up from time to time, and I still have grace for him.  In discovering my own likes and preferences, I'm reminded of how I often I just took the leftover instead of what I wanted, and I still have grace for him.

Why?

In therapy last night, we talked a lot about the fantasy him vs. the real him.  In reflecting, he put on so much pretense that I struggle to separate the two versions of him.  In looking for some completely unrelated e-mail this morning, I stumbled upon one he sent me from August 2019 that starts in larger font "You're the One for Me" and then goes on to describe so many reasons why I'm the one for him.  Was that pretense?  Was that real?  Some mix of both?  There were highs like this (and others that involved more concrete actions) throughout the entire marriage.  Did the real him show up in any of these moments?  Or is the real him just the low moments including the way he ended it all?

I think grace allows me to leave room for that which I do not understand.  I recognize that very little in life is black and white.  Most things are far more complex and nuanced.

There were too many things about him that truly felt genuine even all the way to the end.  As one example, someone out to intentionally cause pain would have made the divorce a painful process.  I've seen it happen with so many others but I actually experienced the quite opposite - he was so cooperative and willing to compromise as we divided the material aspects of the life we had built together.  That doesn't excuse or dismiss the pain he did actually cause but it leaves room for nuance and grace as I evaluate the entirety of the relationship.

So as my perspective of him lands heavily on the view that he is a very troubled human running from himself vs an intentionally manipulative selfish person, I think my perspective is landing there with some clarity and not necessarily because I still have rose colored glasses on.  Maybe I'm wrong about that but I really don't think my judgment of people is that far off.