Ever Ask Yourself…

…

When I was growing up the life, I had pictured for myself is not quite what I am living now.

…ended high school wanting to be an accountant.

Besides becoming Jewish I don’t think that I have actually achieved much! I mean yes, I am halfway through my Social Media Course, but I am not sure what I am going to do with the diploma/certificate after the course is complete in a few weeks.

I am married but my husband and I just seem to talk more about reaching goals and getting to where we have always wanted to be and the place, we assume we will be happy and content.

But we are not getting there, and we are not making our current situation the best it can be, as reaching our dream level seems less and less possible every day.

For the last few weeks as I finish reading a book I begin another one. Recently I read a book about a wife in an abusive relationship.

I mean Thank G-d I am not in a physically abusive relationship like that character but Emotional Abusive is still abusive right?

On Sunday I started reading… …and finished it last night and started reading the follow up…  and I am loving these books. But the story is making me feel so torn.

IF YOU INTEND ON READING THESE BOOKS, I SUGGEST YOU DON’T READ ON AS I MAY SPOIL A FEW THINGS!

Pretty much throughout the first book I favored Ryle Kincaid to Atlas Corrigan. I don’t know if that is just because Ryle is a Neurosurgeon and has money and is described to be good looking. But whenever Lilly speaks of leaving him I keep telling her to hold on and hope that he will change. She gets the strength to leave him and as much as I look up to her for wanting a divorce for what he has done to her and the way he makes her feel, I cannot lie and say there isn’t a part of me that doesn’t hope she takes him back. Every time I find myself thinking and feeling this, I ask myself why. I mean he has physically hurt her and even lied about it to her, he constantly gaslights her. When I ask myself why I want her to go back to him, I realize it is probably because I go back to my husband every time. I see him drinking and even though he doesn’t get violent like he did all those years ago, a part of me still fears that he may and so I get angry and defensive and argumentative and sad…we argue and for the next few days we will not speak to each other…I will refrain from wearing my wedding ring and sometimes I will ask him to leave but a few days later things are all merry between us, he promises me that he will stop drinking and we make promises to each other, so my wedding rings go back on and we hug and kiss, only to live through all this again a few weeks/months later.

I don’t know why I hold on, maybe it is just that I am scared of being alone. I keep telling myself that as soon as we earn more money or get that house or we just reach a point closer to our dreams everything will be okay. But we have been together for 11 years and so the violence may have stopped but the emotional abuse is still there.

So, Lilly has found her first love and another big part of me hopes that works out somehow. I mean he has always been her protector, even as a kid, and he loves her, and he has achieved so much on his own through all his horrors and abuse and struggles. They deserve each other and a huge part of me would be happy when I finish “It Starts with Us” and have them end up together.

I want my happy ending, but I really wish it would be with my husband. I am not strong enough to leave him, but I want to find my protector and knight in shining armer. I just wish that was my husband…or I wish that I never met and fell in love with him and right now was with my Atlas. 

In “It Ends with Us” Lily’s mother says something to her…

“…But the last thing you want to do is lose sight of your limit.” “We all have a limit. What we’re willing to put up with before we break.” 

When I look back on my relationship/marriage with my husband I see that I lost my limit years ago. I forgave and tolerated much more than I ever should and boy it would have been easier to have stuck by it and ended it then, but I guess as they say it is never too late. As I am writing this, and I am thinking about Coleen Hoover and her childhood and the characters she writes about in his book I find myself wanting to be more and more like Lily and finding my Atlas. So, I think this weekend it is time that I reflect on what my limits were and are now and I voice them to my husband, and I stick to them.