1. I never went to see Drew that night, and only went to see him when he requested. I heard it from someone in the group of friends. She was new-ish to the group and didn’t know all the things that were going on. She lived down the hall from Drew, her 3 roommates and her saw the guy with the bat and asked him what was up. She came to me a while later and told me about the bat incident. She eventually left the group as well.

2. The fighting usually had to do a lot with the alcohol. Yes, I know it didn’t help in hind sight. Usually when we hung out in the group together, we would start the night keeping our distance. The drunker we got, the more the subconscious feelings arose and that’s when the fights happened. We really didn’t mean to fight, but the alcohol seemingly took over our emotions. Sometimes the fighting would happen when I tried to help him with his issues. He felt comfortable talking with me, but I know that I wasn’t the best person to help him in this situation. I would try to listen, but if I didn’t give him the answers her wanted, we would fight.

3. It was college, with a large group of friends throwing parties 4 out of 7 nights a week. I drank like a college student before the break-up, and drank much more during and after. I drank, Drew drank, everyone was always drinking, which of course didn’t leave much room for rational thought.

I’ve been working through this some more, and I think I’ve made some good progress. In yesterday’s love challenge, I wrote down all of the things that I contributed to the picture: the drinking, the fighting, the “letting my emotions run my life, not my brain”. I then started to write down what I thought they were responsible for contributing. I deleted that part, because I could tell that was stirring up the anger in me. Then I made a list of things I could’ve done different. Hind sight is 20/20, but I honestly felt that I did the best I could with everything going on. I thought, yes I made some mistakes, but I’m human and I can forgive myself. Then I thought, they were human too, and they probably did the best they could given the circumstances. Maybe I don’t agree with what they did, but maybe they don’t agree with what I did either. I think this is the “rational” that I was looking for, and with some time, I know that I can forgive them someday.

Thank you Anita for all of your support, questions and help. I appreciate the commradary you provided to help me get through this challenging time. Best wishes!