Recently a best friend and I were talking about past hurts we couldn’t let go of, particularly with partners we had dated decades ago. We’re both ridiculously happy in our lives now, in our homes and careers, so why do we still bear these painful grudges — the ones that lodge like splinters and we talk and talk about with our friends? I began to wonder, what could I do to get over them? I mean, what was the point of them? I didn’t know what to do except that I was tired of giving energy to these memories. Why couldn’t I just let them go? And then, I realized that maybe I couldn’t because I was getting something out of it, and the trick was, to figure out what that something was.
Flashback to decades ago and a person we'll call Tim. I was already traumatized from the sudden death of a fiancé; I couldn’t bear the grieving and I tried everything. Despite the advice of family, friends, and therapists, I decided hurling myself into a new relationship would be the perfect salve. And I got involved with an emotional abuser. He wouldn’t let me eat. He criticized my clothing, my hair, and my friends (he didn’t want me to have any), and he controlled what I read and what activities I was forced into doing. He wasn’t affectionate. He didn’t have a sense of humor. His parents were his confidants, and I was always reminded by them that I didn’t fit into the family. I stayed because if I left, I’d grieve a man I really had loved, and Tim seemed the lesser of two evils. It was only when Tim began reading my mail without asking and, even worse, went into my computer and rewrote some of my novel, that I broke, and then I left.
I grieved again, but certainly not for Tim, whom I had no intention of ever seeing again. But my anger wouldn’t go away. Instead, it kept flaring. I thought maybe I could write about it, to get over it that way, but all that did was to freshen up the anger and remind me of the hurt and emotional violence. Maybe, I thought, what I was getting from this was expressing the anger I should have shown years ago. But who wants to feel angry forever or to be caught in a loop without any closure? Every time I had tried to talk to Tim about this, he deflected it and insisted that I was crazy, and that nowhere on earth would I find a better boyfriend. Maybe, I reasoned, I needed to have a switch in perspective.
Remember that scene in the TV show, Six Feet Under? A photographer is taking a photo of her family, and her brother says quietly, “You can’t capture this. It’s already gone.” That unlocked everything for me! I began to consider that this time that had traumatized me so much was already gone. And if it was already gone, why was I wasting time still dwelling on it and letting it affect me? That time I spent with that abusive man was a blip in time, not a continuing piece of my life.
I began to wonder what else this pull of the past might be giving me. Maybe imagining myself arguing with him, stating my case, making him see how damaging he had been, admittedly gave me a flare of pleasure. It made me feel less of a victim, and truthfully, less guilty for having been desperate enough to lead him on. So, I dug deeper until I realized something else. Maybe it was enough to know that because I had gone through that past experience with Tim, I had been changed — and for the better. Now I would never, ever let that kind of thing happen to me again. Instead of feeling shamed and angry that I stayed with a toxic beau, why not be thrilled that I finally was able to leave and cut ties and recognize a bad situation when I saw one? I had wanted Tim to rescue me from grief, but in the end, not only did that not happen, I also had to rescue myself. And in doing so, I got stronger. I stopped being a victim.
Even better, having been in a relationship that was so wrong made me know what I wanted to be right in the next one. The man who became my husband held my hand on our first date and was so silly, I was falling over with laughter, something I wasn’t used to. He was kind and didn’t criticize, and we made all our time together an adventure. And the more I was with him, the more he became my life. Remember how the conclusion of a book or movie often proclaims, "The End?” You know what? Maybe, it’s just the beginning of something healthy and new.
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Caroline Leavitt was recently long-listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Fiction Prize.