Self
Inside Out and Outside in, Where Do I Begin?
Weekend prompt 7–8 November
I stopped playing the blame game.
At age 19, I kidded myself I was very grown-up. I’d left home at 17, got a job and shared an apartment with another girl.
A few romances, then I met a guy whom I thought was the one. We moved in together — a shocking thing to do in a very conservative society in 1969!
We married later that same year. When I look back, I’m not sure that I wanted marriage so soon. I think part of it was pressure from society. I’d borrowed a friend’s wedding ring to wear when we were first looking for an apartment. After living there for three months, the caretaker became suspicious, asking me why letters reflected my maiden name.
(This was the good old days when you wrote letters, folded them into an envelope, sealed the flap and stuck a postage stamp on the top right corner — archaic now!)
My first husband turned out to be a lazy son-of-a-bitch — couldn’t keep a job and always knew better than anyone else. He often got fired for telling the boss how he should run his business.
The bottom line is he never grew up — always blaming others for his lot in life.
Foolish me, I stuck around, hoping that one day he’d change. I was the breadwinner, cook and general skivvy. Over the years, he eliminated my friends from our social circle. I wanted to leave but had nowhere to go.
I blamed him for my circumstances.
Then one evening, I arrived home from a busy workday and said something that upset him — to this day I don’t know what — but he lashed out at me and I avoided his punch by sidestepping, as I’d learned when I practised Aikido a decade earlier.
That was a wake-up call.
I could only blame myself for allowing external events to control my life. Then I made a rational decision in December 1984 to divorce him in 1985. How I’d do it didn’t matter, but I believed I deserved a better life and only I could make that happen.
My frail Dad was in a clinic with a bout of depression after his wife (my stepmother) had left him. When I visited him I met my future husband, who was recovering from depression and alcohol abuse. He’d befriended my Dad and cared for him. I didn’t know then we’d fall in love — I just rejoiced I had found a new friend.
A month later, I moved back to my Dad who was now home, and started divorce proceedings. Through connections with the company of which he had been a director before he retired, I began my corporate career. No longer a PA/Secretary, but a consulting job with prospects for advancement. (Within four years I rose to Branch Manager.)
My new friendship kept me anchored as my future ex made my life hell. (One time he rammed the back of my company car and I had to take out a restraining order.)
Over time our friendship turned into love and we moved in together after my divorce was final.
We’ve been together for 35 years!
If I’d stayed stuck in hoping my first husband would change one day, I wouldn’t be where I am now. To stay in victim mode, blaming someone or something out there, gets you nowhere.
I learned the universe conspires to help you when you are clear about what you want and are willing to take action.
That’s what happened!
From the inside out, not the outside in!
Thank you for being here.
