Blowing It

Would you expect that on some level, I realize that I think I've blown it?

Blown what, you ask?

Blown it. Blown the chance at the fairy tale. Blown the chance to find genuine happiness from a relationship with a man. I really believe that on some level, I've completely blown it. That I don't have a chance anymore... at least, not in this time and place.

How on earth could you've blown it, you ask with a note of confusion. Just because you had what everyone now realizes was a really ridiculous marriage? Because you had a ridiculous divorce? So what? That doesn't mean you've blown it, you argue. You're the person who says that the only failure is in giving up. Doesn't that apply to relationships, too? So if you can keep trying, then how could you have blown it?

Because the it that I've blown isn't just the idea of relationships. I've blown my chance at the entire fairy tale. You know the story. Everyone does. Boy and girl meet, boy and girl have stars in their eyes, boy and girl believe that every happiness is possible for them, and boy and girl dance off into the sunset of mature love. But now that I've been married, or more properly failed at being married, I lost that chance to do it right for the rest of my life... and that chance mattered to me. I'm never going to grow old with the love of my youth who will adore me forever. I'll never be a genuine starry-eyed bride again, and if I find a great guy who navigates my barriers, who deserves to be my husband in all ways that matter, he won't ever be the husband, not with a living precessor running around who had that place first. So long as my ex is around in the world, there will always be another man walking around who was my husband, the husband. This sounds mighty Catholic of me, doesn't it? But it really is my value, it really is an issue in my mind.

I've blown it.

Okay, I can hear one of my friend's friends yelling that I didn't blow it, that my exhusband blew it, and that I need to get past the idea that it's my fault. Well, yeah. But some of it was my fault. If I'd picked more carefully, maybe I'd never have married him in the first place. But then, I wouldn't be divorced now. I'd have a chance, still.

Three and a half years ago, when my exhusband just left, a friend of mine (also divorced in her thirties but since remarried) told me that she grieved a while after her divorce that she'd lost the chance to do it right the first time. At the moment she told me, I didn't grasp the implications of what she said. I couldn't see past my own immediate crisis. But I've thought of her recently. I've thought of her story. That's how I feel, like I've lost the chance to do it right the first time. I'm leavings now. Although I recognize myself as a rare and special person, somehow at the same time, I wasn't good enough. Maybe I'm still not.

You know?