Hardest thing to me to admit…

My life is better without him.

That phrase has rolled around in my head a lot lately and has been uttered by those near and dear to me but I couldn’t own them because I was afraid of being harsh or bitter or angry or something else terribly cliché.

But it’s true. My life is better without him.

That doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy or that we didn’t have a good life at one point. It just got to where my life – the life that I wanted to live, that I thought I could live – was not good. And being with him did not help make it better. In fact, in many ways, being with him made my life worse.

And I share that responsibility. I could have spoken up sooner. I could have insisted we go into counseling when I realized we were going terribly awry. I could have found a way to try to reach him and let him know how bad… oh, wait… there was that night with the pills…

Okay, so maybe I didn’t do everything I could or I did do everything I could or he didn’t or whatever. What it comes down to is… my life is better without him.

I can breathe. I can leave clothes on the floor. I can go out till 3 o’clock in the morning and sing my fool head off. I can make a feature film in seven days.

I can heal. I can find myself. I can be myself.

I can let my heart be open again without fear of doing it wrong or being wrong. My heart will get broken in a different way, I’m sure, but at least it’s starting to want to peek out again and be pried open. It’s been shut for so long, which is why it’s hurt so much to feel it creaking open.

The last few days have been full of little tiny things that have made me really embrace that idea – being better without him. And accepting that without feeling guilty. I am glad that I have the people in my life that have pointed out to me how great my life is now and how much I have changed in the last 14 months. I am a new person.

And maybe not being afraid to say that, to say that my life is better now that he’s not in it, to be able to acknowledge that, maybe this will allow me to put it behind me and move forward. And by putting it behind me, maybe it will allow me to be more free with my life, more free with what I want and feel more capable of getting what I want without the fear that I am somehow hurting him by pursuing my life.

That’s the weird thing, I think. I felt guilty about living my life. I wanted to hide my accomplishments from him because I was afraid it would hurt him to see me do well without him. Yet he never worried about how much he hurt me with his criticism and his harsh words and his stinging commentary. But even now, I still want to protect him and keep from hurting him because I feel like I have hurt him so much by simply leaving him. I think that’s a part of what kept me from really pursuing the OOMA because I was afraid it would hurt him to see me with someone else. Irrational, I know, as he was dating someone for a while and apparently is again dating someone. But I still worried about hurting him.

But just accepting those words – my life is better without him – takes the edge off that guilt. Because it means he is truly no longer a part of my life. Which means I no longer have to worry constantly about hurting him. That doesn’t give me permission to slap him in the face or intentionally do something to bring hurt on to him. But I can stop including him in my thought process when I am moving forward. He does not belong in the future in my life. He belongs in the past, both the good and the bad. He needs to go about making his own future, which I believe he is, and leave me in the past as well.

And maybe he will find a day where he can say the same thing about me – that his life is better without me. And he’ll be happy and fulfilled and move forward to whatever his destiny is. But his destiny is no longer my concern. I can wish him well, I can hope the best for him, but I can let him go.

I thought I had let him go but until those words came to me today, I realized I still had a finger wrapped around him. And, today, that finger finally let go. Because my life is better without him.