Ten years ago...

Last night, my daughter was pawing around in my closet while I changed the sheets on my bed. She turned up a purse, which she promptly packed with various odds and ends, including a lone Barbie shoe, some coins from Russia, and an old piece of hot pink tissue paper. She also unearthed one of my old journals. While she became engrossed in dramatic play involving the mentioned props, I became engrossed in my journal.

Ok, if you knew me, you'd think: very bad idea. Like Anne Lamott writes in Operating Instructions, my mind at night is like an alley after dark: it's not a good place to be wandering around alone.

This was a journal I had started keeping while traveling in south central Russia a decade ago. I kept writing after returning home and to grad school. Aside from stressing out about coursework and dissertation topics, I mainly wrote about the reservations I had about Fred as a life partner!! I wrote that I was attracted to his vitality and ambition, but I worried that he directed that energy toward professional pursuits, not family life or relationships. I actually expressed the fear that "I might end up spending a lot of time alone, if we end up together." I wrote that I hated how he only seemed to relax after consuming copious amounts of beer (or whiskey). I wrote that he had elitist tendencies. Hello!!! How right I was!

Reading about my many reservations -- and wanting to slap myself for how many were spot on -- actually did NOT lead to a downward spiral in mood. I felt better, actually. Ok, I gave it ten years. Turns out he is a workaholic, as I feared, and probably an alcoholic. I didn't know then that he has a wandering eye. That might have helped me to end it back when I was prevaricating and talking myself into marriage with him.

I am beginning to see -- and really feel -- that I was never going to be happy with him. I wish that he would have ended our marriage with some dignity, some honor. But I'm beginning to recover my true self, and it feels great.