Lessons Learned

I was in a relationship with a woman for almost four years.  It was wonderful.  She was the person I planned on spending the rest of my life with.  We met when I was still in high school, seventeen, through work.  She didn't catch my eye at first,  and honestly I didn't even like her.  We got to know each other.  She had a long term girlfriend she had never been faithful with and I had a boyfriend I thought I was head over heels in love with.  She and I became best friends, and our significant others began to make comments about us being more than friends.  This was not the case, and ended up being the one thing that pushed us together.  I took a break from my boyfriend, being honest with him, and she began cheating on her girl friend. Eventually he and I ended things for good, and not on good terms, and I began only seeing her.

I was the typical girl on the side.  "When are you going to leave her?"  "You promised you would tonight."  "Can I see you tomorrow?"  "I'll keep it quiet."  I was everything I never ever thought I'd be, and I became the girl that ruined what from the outside looking in was the perfect relationship with her and her partner.  

After a few ups and even more downs, and me falling absolutely in love with this adulteress, we ended up together.  We were happy.  I thought we were happy.  We had a wonderful relationship it seemed.  We fought now and then, but that's normal.

She got clean from hard core drugs and convinced me I had a problem with alcohol. Keep in mind, I was 18 years old, incredibly codependent, and this was my first real relationship.  I got clean, stopped drinking all together, and fell into the Narcotics Anonymous program.  I owe my life to that program, but not for the reasons you think.

She and I both did well in the program, and at about eight months clean I really started working on me as a person and not as me as her girlfriend.  I realized what I did and didn't deserve and what I was and was not willing to put up with.  And at about this time she rekindled an old friendship.

You can guess where the rest of the story goes.  I stopped asking permission to do things and spent the money I made on things I wanted to and not necessarily things she wanted me to.  I still paid my half of the bills and took care of what was needed.  

She began cheating, spiritually and emotionally with the married woman she rekindled the friendship with.  They began to sneak out and see each other; the woman lying about my girlfriend needing her to her husband, and my girlfriend spinning the same lines on me.  And it worked.  They began a secret 'relationship,'  (for lack of better words) for about four months.  

Eventually they got caught, and everything was done.  It was spun out to be my fault; that I pushed her away or that I wasn't there for her.  The exact same lines she sang to me when her and her girlfriend finally ended and where I stopped being just the girl on the side.  The last time she got caught doing the same thing.  

My codependent, ignorantly blissful world came crashing down and I was the only one left for pick up the pieces.  I didn't have all my things out of the house I spent a year making our home before the girl was already moved in.  It hurt.  Saying it hurt is an understatement, but there are no better words.  

Now, it's been two months and I've begun to see other people.  I'm not looking for a relationship, but being in a relationship is the only thing I've known and what I've had to grow up in.  Now, I'm twenty years old starting over with almost nothing. 

Four years ago, if I hadn't of gotten involved with this girl, right now I would be living in my own place, maybe with the man of my dreams I left for her.  I would be a sophomore in college, I would be getting into my career classes.  I would have a ring on my finger.  I would still be the same old Sarah, but I would be happier with the way my life was and who would be in it.  

I've revisited my relationship with that man, and there is no chance of fixing what I broke.  We are two entirely different people now, and while we are best friends again, I am the girl he talks to about his girlfriend.  And it hurts too.  

We can't do this though.  We can't go back and say, "what if," because those things can never ever happen the way they  would have then.  We have to live with the consequences of our actions, and we are the ones that have to live with what we've done at the end of the day, good and bad.  

So, I'm 20, which is still very young, starting over.  I've got to get back to myself, and worry about what I need to do to fix my story, and clean up my side of the street.  At the end of the day, the only side of the road we have is our own.  I don't have to live with my ex girlfriends mistakes, I have to live with mine. And while it's okay for me to hurt and feel angry or sad, I have to get up and put one foot in front of the other.  Otherwise I'll stay in the same place forever.  

The other side of my bed gets really cold at night, but I just roll over and ask for acceptance, grace, and mercy and close my eyes.  With tears or with out, eventually I fall asleep.  Everything hurts, but some of the biggest lessons you learn in life, the most beneficial ones, comes from the biggest mistakes.