After becoming widowed, I realized I was mourning a lot more than the death of my husband.
I was mourning the other things that he and his mental illness took from me.
Yes, my husband took a lot from me, and yes, I let him.
Bret made it fundamentally clear that he did not want me to have any connection to my life before him. Sad but true, the things that drew him to me, he wanted me to discard.
This included actual physical heirlooms; he always maintained that my need to hang on to these kinds of things classified me as a “hoarder,” and he had no patience for hoarding. (“I won’t be married to a hoarder, so you need to choose.”)
Yes, he said that to me on multiple occasions.
It was the same with being homesick and wanting to visit home. He would tell me that if I wanted to visit home so bad, then I should just stay there. (“You need to ask yourself why you have the need to run back to the place your old self lived.”)
Yes, that was also said to me. I only visited home four times in twelve years, and two of these reasons were for unfortunate events, and the other two were because we decided to move up here–just a good five hours from where I was from–and we were in the process of said move.
I could go on, but the inventory of all the things her required me to jettison is not the point.
The point is all the time that I feel like I lost.
We’ve all heard of people lamenting having wasted the best years of their lives on someone, and honestly, I sometimes feel that way. Most of the time, I know that for as much as he took, I also got a lot.
But when I left here after meeting him, I wasn’t just younger; I had friends; a social life.
I haven’t had a consistent social life since before he left us, and at the age I am now, it’s proven tough to try and pick that kind of thing back up.
I see friends from before, who moved on to other friends in my absence. And of course, most of the friends I had when he was still alive also went their own way as time moved on.
I have spent the last few years reclaiming who I was before I allowed Bret to take who I was away from me. Overall, I’m pleased with my progress.
But it doesn’t bring that time back. The years are gone. Friends have moved on. Mementos are just memories.
And the husband I chose chose to check out early, leaving me with less than I started with.
That is the hard pill to swallow, but all I can do is keep going.
Time will keep moving, whether I accept it or not.
