I'm in the middle of a divorce I swore I would never get, from a man I love who was my best friend. It has taken me years to get used to this idea, years of desperate struggle. It's the biggest failure of my life, and I have spent the last two years feeling like I deserved to die because the failure is largely my fault.
The judgment in that. The pain. But mostly the judgment. I was raised by harsh and judgmental people. People who would cut off connection to their family because they sinned and they didn't want to be tainted with that sin. People who have their own idea of what God is and that idea mainly boils down to hatred and judgment of human frailty.
I spent the last few years knowing that I was going to have to divorce my husband and feeling so sad about that. So helpless. So responsible, and so unable to do anything to stop it.
Tonight I realized that it's ok. I'm human and I made a big mistake marrying a man when I really need to be with a woman. I compounded that mistake by feeling like he was my family. It took an epic bit of battle yesterday to come to that. There was my childhood god again, something I fired years ago, back in the vision of a hawk. It was circling me, and I felt like a bunny all fluffy and sweet and targeted for death if I moved an inch. It took not long at all to realize what was going on. My imagination showed me a feathered and merciless god.
I'm tired of not moving an inch, and I'm tired of feeling guilty for wanting to be with a woman.
How is this political? How isn't it? The crosshairs of religion and sexuality have rested on my life for as long as I can remember. As a country we are so afraid to talk to kids about sexuality. We don't want to harm them by letting them see two same gender adults who love each other. But we have no trouble with letting people brainwash their kids with anything they want to force them to believe. I know. I don't want to live someplace where people are told how to raise their kids either. But I'm sad that I was brainwashed by my culture to the point that I didn't even realize my innate sexuality.
I've spent most of my life being afraid. Maybe that is how I was born. Maybe it was something my cautious and judgmental relatives taught me. Most likely it was a little of both. But I hope, deeply hope, that this is the last time I have to fire that vengeful judgmental god of my childhood. I can finally see a life I would like to live. It's not that I didn't love the last 17 years, because I have loved that time more than any other time in my life. Raising my babies has been so amazing. But I always felt locked up somehow. Like I didn't have a direction beyond being a mom. It turns out that when your sexuality is locked away lots of useful direction goes with it.
I thought failure was to be avoided at all costs. I thought it was shameful. I thought I couldn't live with it. I was terrified of it. Weirdly and for the first time ever, it just doesn't seem like it's that bad. People get divorced all the time. We are allowed to thrive anyway.
I know this is a basic idea. Hopefully, anyone reading this is going "yeah. Forgiveness. Do-overs". But it feels like joy bubbling out of me, this idea that I can forgive myself.