I almost titled this blog post: what to do when you fall in love with someone who turns out to be a bad person.

But the goal, my goal, is forgiveness. Complete and total forgiveness.

Not for her sake, but for mine.

I believe that not forgiving, carrying anger, turns you into a monster.

And I won’t be that.

Hell no.

I will be kind, loving, compassionate, and happy. As happy as a human can be. I will go through periods of introspection. I will sometimes get depressed, I will be anxious, but generally the person I am and aspire to be is happy.

And I forgot that for a while.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes love doesn’t work out and it hurts when it ends. It’s sad, devastating, difficult. That’s what happened with my former husband and I. You work through it and it’s hard.

This is not what happened with her. This person is…well…I am mean seriously, she’s…I can’t even speak…I literally cannot even speak about her. I open my mouth to speak about it and the words get clogged in my throat. I cannot voice the truth of who she turned out to be.

And this blog post isn’t about her. It’s about me.

It’s about forgiveness.

Over the past year, I have done all the things to forgive her.

I have meditated. I have a little visualization that I worked out in my therapist’s office. Where I would envision her child self and my child self are standing face-to-face and my child self is holding her child self and saying the words,

“The same God that is  in me is the same God in you. I forgive you completely and I release you to be happy”.

I did this daily for months. It helped. It was ridiculous but I did it because I wanted to forgive and be happy.

Each day it got better. Some days were better than others. A few weeks ago I declared that I was over it. I thought I was. I felt so free.

But lately I have learned some things about this person I once loved.

I have learned that in addition to being cruel and, likely a narcissist, she is also a pathological liar.

I kind of knew that. I knew she had told people I was crazy. I swallowed my anger about it. She used to call all of her X’s crazy (RED FLAG). It didn’t surprise me. And frankly, spending a year with her can make you crazy. I felt a little crazy when it ended. Broken hearted, defeated, overwhelmingly sad.

I knew she had told people I was stalking her, driving past her house, contacting her…blah, blah, blah.

That one surprised me. In it’s untruth. I didn’t expect that lie. And some of the ones that surrounded that lie. Again I swallowed my anger. I cried. I felt betrayed and sad. I tried to stay as far away from her as possible to discount these lies. For months, I wouldn’t drive anywhere near her house for fear I would see her and encourage this set of lies. I never spoke ill of her. If anyone asked me what happened, I smiled and said “it didn’t work out. It’s been difficult but we are both happier now. I wish her the best.”

But recently I have gotten some specifics, some “bonus lies” that were said, some of them dumb lies, pointless lies but some of them were about my character.

My character.

I am not perfect. I have made some mistakes in my life. I own them. I apologize, regularly.

But I am a good, kind, loving, wonderful person. My character is strong.

I know this. Absolutely.

Yesterday I learned that this person, who I loved, a LOT (it almost makes me sick to think how much)…told people I stole money from her. It’s like the 50^th lie that’s gotten back to me. And I just swallow them all. I remain silent and I do my little meditations and work on forgiveness.

But this one, that I stole money from her, I cannot swallow it.

I just can’t.

I have no idea what it is about this particular lie that has me so upset.

I don’t know what to do with the anger.

And I am sick and tired of holding my tongue and saying nothing. I am tired of being silent and turning the other cheek.

I feel in shock all over again as though the past year of positive visualizations and sending loving kindness her way has been for nothing. I am so mad I can’t see straight.

I am disgusted.

I feel betrayed. Again.

Brand new betrayal.

So I made a decision today.

It’s not her I need to forgive. Forgiveness is wasted on her.

Today, I will shift all my loving kindness, all my meditations and visualizations to someone who does matter.

ME.

I will forgive myself for mistakenly loving someone who was not worthy of my love.

I fucked up. I learned. I’m still learning.

I will do all the work it takes to forgive myself for my poor judgement.

I believe that everything happens for a reason and I have searched my soul for the reason I got involved with this person, how I could have fallen so deeply in love with someone so cruel.

I thought she was my soul mate. I trusted her, me,  the girl who has stood by my mantra “trust no one” trusted the untrustworthy.

Maybe the reason is that I must learn to practice loving kindness for myself. That’s what this experience will help me discover. I hope so. I hope there is a reason. I really do.

Because I am awesome and I am worthy of that forgiveness.

 

PS: I don’t steal money. Ever. Very few people know this blog exists, I don’t publicize it. Slander is impossible to overcome. You simply cannot control what people say about you. But I needed to say it, out loud. I am not a thief. It feels a tiny bit better to say it. A tiny bit.