Hi Anita,

“if, and only if you want to attend to my parallel idea, please do. I will share something in this regard with you, connecting it to weaning, the verb you used at the beginning of your post:”

I would love to hear your narrative or parallel of what my story says to you.

(“He wants me to forgive him on his terms!“- what are his terms, and what are your terms, I wonder.)

My terms are quite simple. I believe that forgiving is a simple task, the forgetting part is the hard part and if someone does something once they will do it again.  I am a very firm believer in “Actions never lie”. Human beings are creatures of habit and don’t just change like that without a conscious effort. he is not making a conscious effort.

I asked him in our last conversation why it was so important for him to greet me in public. I know for a fact that his persona is something he values the most because it distracts people from finding out what he is. that is a part that he didn’t plan on giving me access to when we started dating. but I have by chance come to know the rot inside.  His answer to my question was that greeting was a normal thing for people that know each other. Unless I didn’t forgive him greeting should be something we do.

I was like no, you don’t get to determine how I forgive you and what I do with my forgiveness.  I am not a fool. I have forgiven you but God forbid I bring you anywhere near me and give you access to my personal space for you to hurt me again.  he has been playing innocent like he had an out of body experience when he said and did all those horrible things to me.  this is one of the reasons I don’t like Christians! their sense of responsibility for their bad actions is warped because they blame everything on the devil who had nothing to do with any of the mess they made. ( Did I mention he is a new-age Christian?)

so in his books when I forgive him I should greet him and smile in public and act all sweet so that the whole world can see that he is such a swell guy.  I suppose he equally didn’t know me because those that do know me, know that I don’t play to the crowd and I have always been that one fish the swims upstream. (Oddity and peculiar). that’s what I say no to. I won’t be part of his elaborate charade.

This whole year has been filled with harsh and rushed change.  I want to comfort myself and say everything happens for a reason, that there is some cosmic force (God) out there looking out for me and putting me out of harm’s way. I don’t want to do that because I want to take responsibility for my transformation.  I want to go through this whole process of transformative healing wide awake.

I know I am a great person and an even more decent woman. I deserve to be with a man who respects me, a man that wants to be with me, value me as an individual and not an accessory for him to adorn himself with whenever he is feeling down. I am going to do better. I am going to transform myself into the best version of myself.  I will not dumb myself down to accommodate anyone ever again. it’s up to them to move up to my level.

Elizabeth.