It's not my fault.

This realization finally hit me this weekend. What's happened to me, what's turned my life into a nightmare... it's not my fault. I've tried to place the blame upon myself, just to have someone or something to blame--because if I could find an object of blame, then I had somewhere to direct my anger. Something to take it all out upon. I was happy to take it out upon myself. At least that way, I could get the anger out into the light. But I did not spare myself any harm by blaming myself. I didn't see it then, but now I do. For months now, I have torn myself to pieces over this situation--because I turned him away; I drove him mad enough to leave. And suddenly, I felt like my life was not worth the unbearable effort of being.

When I saw him last weekend, though, I began to understand that there must be something much deeper going on than him being simply unhappy with me. His discontent must be a product of his own demons, and I just happened to be standing on the bridge that he decided to burn. I have realized that I am not the only one he has decided to reject; rather, our marriage existed within an epoch of his life, the entirety of which he decided to reject. What else exists there with me? His whole life up to this point. His family... his faith... his entire past. What trauma can cause someone like him to reject everything he's ever known and fling himself headlong into one passion--himself?

That's what I see now when I look at him. I see an obscene fascination with himself. I see a gross disregard for any other human being. What I do not see, now, is the man I love. That person, I am afraid, does not exist anymore. What I fear even more is that he never existed--that this stranger, whom I loathe in so many ways, was always the "real" him. That his brief stint with me was something fabricated or imagined.

But at least, now, I can breathe a little easier, because I can see now that all along it was some madness within him that drove him to this. I did not drive him to this. I have to believe that. And I have to move on from there.

I am moving on. I have accepted this as simply the way things are. There is still sadness, but I know it will not linger forever. One of my friends told me, in an attempt to encourage me in the wake of all of this, that whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger. I told my friend in response, feeling utterly barren, that I did not know which of those alternatives would prove to be the case for me.

Now I know. Perhaps it was silly and weak of me to despair so deeply over this, to the point where I detested myself. But today, I can say definitively that I am going to be OK. I finally believe that. I am still leaning upon those around me for support; I know the next couple of months are not going to be easy, as I am in the process of putting this all behind me. I don't know how to put it behind me. But I know I must... and so I will.