What I grieve most - the lost moments I might have more fully lived

Although I think I've been turning this thought around in my head for a while, it was actually put into words today in therapy.  I think what I grieve the most is the lost opportunities to really live.

I don't endure life.  I don't just try to survive it.  I have always wanted to experience the fullness of all it has to offer.  I really try to live in the present moment and find the beauty in the here and now.  This feels as fundamental to me as the breaths I take every minute of every day.

In my marriage, this created a push pull dynamic.  I was not going to let him rob me of all my joy and life so I intentionally pushed forward seeking it out.  But in every one of those moments, he was pulling me backwards.  As he tried to interfere with my joy.  As he handed me a cloud of negativity and negative emotions to carry.  As he drained the energy out of me.  He was this cloud that followed me into every bright sunny day I sought out.

I realized that the bench that haunts me at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, the one where the image of him buried in his phone is so vivid in my memory, doesn't actually represent the ghost of him but actually it represents that negative presence that I felt forced to carry with me everywhere I went.

This is why the relief was so great from the moment he ended it.  I didn't want this divorce.  I deeply grieved the end.  But as much as I didn't want to admit it then, I think I knew immediately my life would get a lot better.  Overnight, I lost that pull of negativity such that my push forward took me places I never could have imagined at a very quick pace.  

Just imagine if I hadn't had that negative pull for two decades.  Just imagine all the ways I would have lived fully.  That is what I grieve most.  Although the logical side of my brain right now is trying to point out that I wouldn't be fully appreciating it like I am today, without the experience of the negative pull.