{"id":130949,"date":"2023-12-14T07:42:14","date_gmt":"2023-12-14T07:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/12\/14\/i-was-a-terrible-wife-how-i-finally-asked-my-ex-husband-for-forgiveness\/"},"modified":"2023-12-14T07:42:14","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T07:42:14","slug":"i-was-a-terrible-wife-how-i-finally-asked-my-ex-husband-for-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/12\/14\/i-was-a-terrible-wife-how-i-finally-asked-my-ex-husband-for-forgiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"I was a terrible wife \u2014 how I finally asked my ex-husband for forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"

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File photo: Couple<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

My ex-husband is an amazing guy. Terrific. Salt of the Earth, incredible person. <\/p>\n

We were together for ten years, and we have a daughter together who\u00a0passed away from SIDS\u00a0twenty years ago.<\/p>\n

The woman I became after she passed, I speak of her often. I was an oxycodone junkie, a functional alcoholic, and a complete mess-up for years. <\/p>\n

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I ruined two marriages, both to great guys. I had nothing left inside me, so I threw pills into the canyon and tried to pretend that I was trying to live, that I was in any way gripping firmly on functionality.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t have put up with me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was chaos. I was estructive and simultaneously barely keeping it together, and I treated my ex-husband like the enemy. Not just in the capacity of a marriage, but later, when he really could have used my friendship.<\/p>\n

I feel I\u2019m fortunate I can\u2019t remember a lot of it\u00a0because I was constantly messed\u00a0up beyond all recognition. I stayed that way for eight or nine years, and who knows how many shenanigans I pulled during that time.<\/p>\n

I am glad I don\u2019t remember many of them, that the oxycodone body blocked for me, and kept me in a haze that doubled as a lifejacket. I couldn\u2019t handle the weight of my sorrow. It was an iron albatross.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been told stories of some of the more spectacular displays of stupidity. Not my proudest moments and the way I treated my ex-husband can make me cry anytime I think about it.<\/p>\n

And yet, even still, I\u2019m the one who left him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For years, he just took it. He loved me in the most absolute unconditional fashion. It was just disguised as an everyday marriage, but he thought I was the smartest woman he knew. He was proud of me and he\u00a0believed in me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never really had that kind of love since and\u00a0I\u2019m resigned to the fact that\u00a0I wasted what I was given. Some\u00a0people never find that kind of love even once.<\/p>\n

I write a column every year on our daughter\u2019s birthday. Some years, I fare better than others, but last year wasn\u2019t one of them. I sent my ex-husband the column, and we had some back-and-forth conversation. Two messages in, and I was surer than I\u2019ve ever been leaving him was a bad decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was genuine and kind because he can\u2019t not be. He\u2019s probably the only person I can truly say I know as I know myself, and he doesn\u2019t have any malice inside him. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s beautiful, inside and out. In real life, not filtered or with an audience. Just think of the best human you know, and I assure you, my ex-husband is of that caliber.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have any secrets anymore.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I will openly admit to the fact I was a terrible wife. After our daughter passed, I knew only pain when I looked at her dad, and I\u2019m certain it was the same for him, but he never weaponized it. I behaved as though words couldn\u2019t wound people. <\/p>\n

As though I didn\u2019t know the weight of the things I was saying and the destructive behaviors I was engaging in.<\/p>\n

I was a complete jerk to that man. I don\u2019t deserve forgiveness. Even still, he gave it. Because that\u2019s who he is \u2014 not because I should have it.<\/p>\n

There was a time in my life when I justified the atrocious behavior that blew up my life, I tried to pretend as though I was giving life a fair shake. But the truth is: I died when my daughter died and my marriage slowly bled out,\u00a0too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After all of the years of holding on, waiting for me to return to my mind, he let me go. Then, he moved on. He remarried, had another daughter, and lived the life that we were supposed to live.<\/p>\n

I turned\u00a0into a shell of myself\u00a0a little more every day, too high to feel much, but not high enough to understand the meaning of the cards I held in my hand. I only knew that my ex was\u00a0free of the sorrow and the memories, and I would stay frozen in this broken has-been suit until I was turned to dust.<\/p>\n

I would take it all. I would live and die alone, stuck in a life I no longer recognized with memories I couldn\u2019t trust to my habits. But he was free. And\u00a0he looked so happy, while I was\u00a0dying slowly.<\/p>\n

But I could\u00a0carry the weight alone\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s the least I could do. I owed him much more. I still do, but he\u2019s never been the type to keep score.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still\u00a0just as selfish\u00a0but I have heard the way I spoke to him in my mind so many times, oddly,\u00a0harsher every replay. I wanted a million times or more to say that I was at fault, that I ruined us, that he was so much better.<\/p>\n

I have said the words before\u00a0\u2014 I\u2019m sorry\u00a0\u2014<\/em>\u00a0or some version of them, but this time, I felt every word I said in my soul. I told him in words that I didn\u2019t edit or polish. I just needed him to know. And he forgave me. And now,\u00a0I\u2019m going to\u00a0try to learn to forgive myself.<\/p>\n

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