Shadow Work Day 2/45
Write a letter to the person who has hurt you the most. This one is so hard.
Travis, I have been sitting here for 20 minutes analyzing this question because I don’t know where to start. I thought to myself, maybe this should be for my dad, maybe’s he’s hurt me the most. But I know deep down in my heart that you have taken that spot over and above. It’s days away from being 6 months since I have physically seen you. It’s been one week since I have cut things off with you and have given you the final goodbye. You have hurt me in so many ways that I am still figuring out more about our relationship and how it’s affected me 6 months later. As I tell my story to other people and share bits and pieces, it’s made things more clear to me how much it hurts me to say that I am so happy that I’ve made this choice. I don’t say that to hurt you, but the damage you’ve done goes so deep that I truly realized this last round of talking with you that you don’t actually fully understand. It hurts me to say these things, because I would never want to belittle you or drag you down and speak poorly of you, but there have been so many aspects that I have come to realize that were such barriers in our relationship that I, now being on this side of things, don’t fully believe that we would ever overcome. Our values and goals were so far off from each others. Not to say that you can’t have different goals, but the values that it boils down to is what broke us. That I value connection, vulnerability, self awareness, loyalty, honesty and growth a hundred fold than you do. I also don’t believe or at least have felt through your messages that you even fully comprehend what some of these are because when you’ve broken them, there has been no remorse. I love you and as hard as it is to feel like I am walking away from the last 7 years of my life for what feels like nothing, it’s also taught me a million things about who I am, what I want and what I would put up with and require in someone in the future. I don’t regret our relationship. We did have good times together. We have some memories for sure, and our trips we’re always pretty great. But those were the highlight reels of our life. Beyond the trips and after the honeymoon stage, sometimes I feel that maybe we should have just cut ties and moved on. I sometimes feel guilty not listening to myself and my heart. For sweeping all the red flags under the rug. I regret not enforcing my boundaries with you, because man did you ever know how to break those. Over and over again. I was so lost. I had absolutely no idea who I was when I moved in with you, I left a house of a narcassistic and controlling father to someone that had absolutely no boundaries and minimal control on his life. You absolutely have taught me a lot. The first few years of being together you helped me break so many characteristics in myself that had been learned from my father. You helped break my pride to come into a place of understanding and self awareness. You helped pull me out of the darkness and be able to see myself in a different light. You allowed me to have a voice. You helped build my self confidence up each and every day and I dont think there was a day that went by that you didn’t tell me how much you love me and how beautiful I am. For those I am so appreciative. You helped unveil a lot of past traumas, you were my rock when my whole family turned on me for years, when I felt the most alone in life I knew I had you. You’ve taught me in a sense how to choose myself, and how to put myself first and go after what I want and desire. You supported me for a good while. You always knew how important my relationship with God was even when I put Him on the back burner, you still asked me if there was something holding me back and you were open to hearing me talk about my faith, whether you chose to believe or just have listening ears. But you also taught me a lot of things from a negative time. You taught me how important boundaries are and that someone that continues to break them doesn’t respect them. You taught me how much lying affected me and honesty was my number one value. You taught me how much I need someone to be their own individual and that I need someone that can be vulnerable. You taught me how important it is to be vulnerable and when you’re not, that your relationship gets stagnant and feels superficial. You taught me that self awareness is important and when you don’t have it, that no one, not even your wife is able to change you and bring you to awareness. You taught me many things that I know I cant tolerate and know what I don’t want in someone. You taught me how to be patient with someone but realize when someone might never change. You taught me about false hope and giving chances, and how endless and emotionally draining it can be when you have the same conversations with the same results and outcomes over... and over, and over again. You taught me how to fight for my values and how important they are for both people in a relationship to have the same values. You taught me how to say no, even when it hurts and the other person makes you feel wrong for it. You taught me how living in fear and walking on egg shells is not a marriage. You taught me how marriage is about both people communicating, being self aware and supporting each other is the most important. You taught me how happiness can only come from within first, that you cannot base your life around your spouse making you happy. You taught me how much goals are important to me, and how having a lack of goals and not caring where you might be in 5 years wasn’t enough for me. You taught me how much I feared having children with someone that was a child, and how important it is to have a partner on the same level with the same goals and security. I am sorry that I broke your heart. I wish you didn’t make me your whole world. I wish a lot of things, and I wish you had the depth, desire and understanding to want to change to build a marriage with potential. I wish you wanted this enough to look internally and become self aware of the issues. I wish you didn’t keep asking me to do the work for you. To tell you how to build back trust after you broken it time and time again. I wish you were more faithful and loyal. I wish you were able to come out of your perspective and see things from any other angle but your own. I wish you understood what forgiveness is, and come into a place of compassion and remorse for your actions and how they’ve led me to this place of having to walk away. You absolutely broke me. I will always have to live with a divorce under my belt. I remember the day we told each other we would be the first generation on both our sides to live a happy marriage and break the generational divorce. I am sorry. I am so sorry for hurting you. I am so sorry if you felt I wasn’t patient enough or had empathy. I am so sorry the last year of our marriage was based around arguments. I am so sorry we never saw eye to eye. I am so sorry for setting boundaries that you didn’t believe in. I am so sorry for not enforcing my values and boundaries against lying, addictions and deceit. I am so sorry for not loving you the way you need to be loved. I am so sorry for not being able to provide enough, for long enough. I am so sorry for always pushing you and challenging you. I am so sorry for the times of negative attitude that I know came from my own place and it spills over to you. I am so sorry for putting so much pressure on you to change and grow. I am so sorry for putting so many expectations on you. On our marriage. For expecting you to want to change and have the same goals and values that I do. I am so sorry for the mean words I’ve said out of anger, frustration and brokenness. I am so sorry for not doing a better job with supporting you and for enabling you. I am so sorry I became to emotionally distant over time and that I wasn’t able to come back from it. I am so sorry for letting you believe that I was okay with and put up with being disrespected for so long. I truly am so sorry for breaking you after walking away. I really do wish you the best. I truly hope that you find yourself. That you take this time to reconnect with who you are and discover yourself in ways you never have. I hope that you allow yourself to be vulnerable, whether thats with yourself or with a therapist. I really do hope that you are able to come to self awareness. I hope that you are able to continue with no drinking, gambling and smoking and that you would do it for yourself, not because someone is asking it of you. I hope that you come to a place of being healthy. That you find the triggers and solutions to helping your skin heal and your body, soul and spirit are healed also. I hope that you one day can come to forgiving yourself. Boy you just need to be able to forgive yourself. You hold onto decades of regret and forgiveness is what can set you free and bring you to a new place in life. I truly hope that you can find that and learn to forgive yourself. I hope you can love yourself one day. I mean truly love yourself. That you make yourself your number one priority and you grow, you dig deep and you learn and discover the root of these traumas and that you are able to resolve them and grow from them and not let them hold you captive anymore. I hope you come to feeling freedom one day. That you can love yourself the way I love you. You can feel free to being who you are and how you were made to be. I hope that you can find yourself and discover what makes you happy, I mean truly happy. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to find what makes you happy, not whom makes you happy. I truly hope that you come to a place of understanding and love and are able to find someone that completes you. I hope you find that person that has the same goals as you, wants the same life as you and has the same values as you. I just want you to be happy, and you say that’s with me, but you don’t even know who you are. Until you start doing some self reflection, self discovery and gain some self awareness, you don’t know what makes you happy or how to discover that. I hope you do one day. Because as much as you have caused me the most pain and heart break, emotional abuse and trauma, and have broken me to the point of having to rediscover who I am, you deserve the same freedom and love and I hope you find that one day.
