Life Path

So what should I direct the affirmations to now? I didn’t know. I had money, I was thin. I was still a troubled person, though. When I was younger, I always thought I was going to do something special. I always pictured myself working in the United States, doing something important. Being someone important. I was so smart, almost a genius at high school, when my hope faded, that got lost somehow. That feeling that I had to use my intelligence to build something in this world turned into search for survival, and any elevated plans I had for myself vanished.

I knew I wanted to make something of my life, but I didn’t know what. I started to have this feeling that I had a path, but I couldn’t figure out what the heck that path was. What exactly did I want to do? No idea.

So because of my complete lack of purpose, I asked to find my life path again. I wrote that down 15 times a day, every day. I read somewhere affirmations are supposed to be specific, but I didn’t have anything specific to ask, and I just knew I was in the wrong path.

You can see something changed there. I believed in a path, a purpose. That for me was unconceivable a few months back. I was really changing. And I realized most people would ridicule my beliefs, and my ideas and the new person I was becoming. But I was happier. And more hopeful and less worried, and more fun. Isn’t that what everybody wants? What was so wrong with that, after all? And plus, as long as I kept quiet, nobody would know about the affirmations and life path beliefs, so I would be safe from being ridiculed.

I even bought a special book to write down my affirmations. I started keeping track of what I wrote, just to have fun watching when I would get them. I put some effort to write in a nice handwriting. I kept writing, 15 times a day, “I, Affirmagal, will find my life path”, for a few weeks.

***

And that is when my husband asked for divorce. Only four months after our wedding. He was my boyfriend for six years, and soon I discovered he was having a flame with a work colleague.

I didn’t know what to do. I was beyond angry. I can’t even remember how insanely mad I was at that time. I really don’t like to remember.

After one week crying, felling too weak to do anything about it, I remembered my affirmations. I saw two choices in front of me at that time. I could ask for my marriage back. I knew I would get it. I was starting to believe. I could have my marriage back. Or I could let it go.

So was that the right path I was asking for? A lone path? Maybe my path and his should never have crossed. Thinking about it, if during college my life started to lose meaning, then all the time that I knew my husband I was a sad person. He loved a sad, needy, looser person. Now I was happy. That’s not the person he married. That’s definitely not the person he lived with for six years. And I - I wanted success now! I wanted the people who surrounded me to want success. I wanted an entrepreneur, well educated, generous, successful person. That’s not what he wanted to work for, and I was trying to force him to be a person he didn’t want to be. That’s definitely not fair.

I was happy and feeling powerful, I was making more money than he was, three times more, I was thin and pretty. Before all the cheating drama, I told him about the affirmations, which he tried for two days and gave up. He said they didn’t work.

Think back, think back. He screwed up every single big chance he ever had, like I did, by the way. He was a looser, like I was. But there was a big difference between us – he was happy with that life, I wasn’t. I was struggling to find myself a better life. I’ve always been struggling. That’s why I tried affirmations in the first place. Because I was desperate to find a solution to my crappy life. Maybe I got to a point that if someone I trusted told me magnetic bracelets could help, I would believe. I don’t know. I was unhappy, and uncomfortable, and that discomfort was the same thing that made me experiment something I was completely and totally against.

I thought about this. I also thought about, how recently, I had had so little patience with him. He didn’t read much, we couldn’t discuss books, literature or science, my favorite topics. He watched a lot of TV and local news, things I wasn’t very interested in. He saw cinema as an art, and he liked really deep European movies which spoke great truths and made a point on showing a lot of human misery. I was getting into a phase where I was questioning my truths, and I really didn’t want to cultivate misery. I wanted to watch comedies. I wanted to laugh. He started playing volleyball with some friends, and he didn’t want me to go. They were his friends, he said. He needed space, whatever. He got himself a freelance job that he didn’t have the competence to finish. I had to finish it for him, and you can imagine how emasculating that must be for a guy who was used to take care of me. Sorry, I didn’t need anyone to take care of me anymore, I didn’t need his help. I could do things myself. We could either walk together, or walk alone, but I didn’t need him to carry me around anymore.

Isn’t that the point of help after all? Helping people to be able to do things on their own? I thought maybe he was trying to keep me needy and weak. Cheating on me definitely made me feel like this again. I’m truly happy and hopeful for the first time in my life, and his first act is to make me fall apart again. Maybe he was trying to keep me weak so he could feel like the stronger in comparison. Maybe he was one of the bad turns I took that put me in the wrong path.

He didn’t throw me out of the house, and I was too weak and devastated to leave. We kept living together a while more.

It was obvious that we were drifting apart. If people love each other, that’s something we can overcome. But he didn’t love me. He said that to my face. I couldn’t understand. You love and respect someone else for six years. This person naturally becomes part of your family. You love your family. I could understand he wasn’t in love with me anymore, but what I could not get was how he could not love me anymore. I sure loved him, despite everything. The “in love” thing… not so sure anymore. I was trying to think what I have done, when did he started feeling nauseated by my presence like that. Can it happen only in four months? Or did it start before? If it started before, why the heck did he ask me to marry him?

He started to humiliate me in every occasion possible. In front of his friends, in front of my parents, in front of his work colleagues. He verbally insulted me in front of other people, something I consider unforgivable. Once, we were walking on the street and he found a girl friend he met somewhere. The girl was with her mother. He and the girl hugged so hard and sexually that her mother and I didn’t know where to look. It was the weirdest and most embarrassing situation.

I thought about my life path… what were becoming my life expectations, and what were his. Maybe, to move forward, I should let him go. He sure was making that very easy to me. I wanted to work hard to get my career back on track. He worked six hours a day in a public department, came back home by 3 pm and complained I was out until eight. I was never there, I was not fun, I was bitter, etc.

But I believe in the sanctity of the marriage, not in a religious way, but in a moral way. I believe in families and I always wanted to have one. I couldn’t simply let my marriage slide like that.

But one day, he simply crossed the line and I left. It was the funniest thing. After all that I suffered, I had no doubt now that my path was not with him. I was devastated, but not a single moment I regretted or doubted myself. I knew. I just knew! It’s a weird feeling, when you are suffering like hell, but you are completely and absolutely sure that you’ll be better off like that. Believe me, it doesn’t make it easier to bare. But you curiously spy on the next curve of your future, thinking ”what’s in there for me?” because you know, something is awaiting you. Something really, really good. And I was dying to find out what it was.