Down the Rabbit Hole

Rage

He always told me it was my fault, that I made him angry and I didn't know when to stop. I always told myself that was the excuse he used to take out his frustrations on me. I'm beginning to see however, that there may have been a nugget of truth in what he used to tell me.
Last night the weather raged outside the windows of the bedroom and I thought about that all again. I thought about a lot of things. I mostly thought about love and hate. I woke up to a sodden and dark world and I couldn't take a full breath until I was behind the wheel of my car. I've reached a point I think, when I can go either way. I'm either going to find away to become the person I am trying to be, or admit that I simply can not. In a morning destined to be filled with busy work, I can only sit here trying to make sense of the thoughts careening around my head.
I have loved two men with the kind of hopeless, faithless love. I loved them despite knowing it would only bring me more pain. They both did destructive things to my spirit. In there own ways, they damaged me for anyone else. A few years ago, I made a choice to try to get past all of that. I worked hard to convince myself that I deserved a better life, a life full of love and hope. I decided that squirreling my heart away or wasting my minutes in hot moments without promise, was never going to bring me happiness. I took a chance and let someone else in. I found a way, miraculously to fall in love a third time.
I had a beautiful wedding. I was dancing with my father and I kept whispering in his ear, "can you believe this is my life? I never would have believed I could be this happy." I really believed that the hope and promise of that one day could carry me through the work I had yet to do. I believed that I had found faith in something grounded, something I could build from. But, it wasn't strong enough to keep the old scars from working to the surface again. I'm not growing with him, I growing against him now. I censor myself all the time. There are things I'm even afraid to see on paper because the darkness of that honesty scares me. Well, I don't care if I can't be fixed anymore. I don't care if I'm damaged beyond the ability to have the life I dreamed about. I think its all gone sour anyway, I feel it. I feel that I'm lost now.
The problem is this I have this undercurrent of rage. I have been carrying around a warehouse of anger, anger I never got to direct at the right people. It sicks inside me, and I take all these guestures of forgiveness but I really don't feel forgiving.
How do you forgive someone for making you afraid to raise your voice in your own defense? How do you forgive someone for spitting in your face, for making you feel pathetic and worthless every day? For critizing your every word, movement to the point when you can not breath in your own space? I remember when I knew it was over, that it had become him or me. I was driving home in a rainstorm and my gut was aching from guilt and from despair. I remember thinking if I just let the wheel go....and the thought filled me with such a cold peace. I went home that day and I told him everything. He broke my glasses and smashed my phone into pieces. I ended up on the kitchen floor looking at it through tears as he kicked at me. I picked myself off the floor and just looked at the heaving, spitting mess that my love had turned into. I lost something of myself then. Some vital part of me broke when I realized that a man could do in rage, that they can make you feel unsafe in your own home. The worst part, the part that curdled any love I had for him was how he apologized after, how he would tell me it was only because he loved me so much. Love, hate...they are so often that same fucking thing. I fought back once, my one shining moment of triumph. I couldn't go to work for two days from the swelling and bruising on my cheek. And here is the pathetic part...I think he was right, I think I made him that way or at least, made him worse. There was a list of sins I used against myself, his inability to find work here, the way my family treated him, our baby. We got divorced, navigating our way through his restraining order and his eviction from the home I was determined to reclaim. I swallowed the anger, put my head down, and wormed my way through it. There were moments much later on when he tried hard to redeem himself. He made efforts to be better, to change what was wrong inside him. We made a peace of sorts but still, that anger went unvented. I think that I hate him still, despite the efforts I have made to forgive him and be his friend. Parts of me at least, hate him for everything he made me.
The other one, the one that came after, only served to prove me wrong that things couldn't get worse. In many ways, he was the polar opposite, a gentle person who thought the sun rose and set on me. He made me feel like a brilliant beauty. He wanted to marry me and have a family. He had this amazing family. At one time, I was completely head over heels. Here's the punch line...he was a raving alcoholic who drained my soul and my bank account. He reached into my life and ripped it open, not once I'm ashamed to say, but over and over again until I found myself on the same destructive path he was on. Love is standing by someone when they are lying in their own blood and diaherra, hate is finding out that the love you thought you had, was a total smokescreen. A lie, every waking moment of it. Then he died. But not before I finally pulled myself up and left. Not before scarring my soul worse than anyone ever has. You can't vent your rage through six feet of earth and you can't make things right with a phantom. I'm the last person who should believe in love. I thought I could save some aspect of this life, I thought I could resurrect hope. The truth is love and hate are the same fucking thing, one breeds the other, its only a matter of time. You always end up looking at empty rooms in the end. Unfortunately, rage is stronger than hope and hate always trumps love.