This time last year

This time last year I wasn't sleeping either, but for a completely different reason. It was this time last year that I knew the next day, I would wake up, close "Shakesploitation", have lunch with the cast, come home and, in the presence of my friends and parents, kick my husband out of the apartment. I can't believe it's been a year.

I was talking to a few people at rehearsal tonight, and I told them I have some mixed emotions about it all. It feels like years since I was with Steve, yet I feel like I've only had a few months since we were together. It's so weird to feel like I've lost and gained time regarding the same situation, but it's happening.

I know New Years is typically the time to look back and reflect on what's happened for the last year, but I really think my New Year, and New Me, started on September 24 of 2006. I'm not going to rehash all the many ways in which I've changed, or the many more things I've learned about myself that I am working on changing. All those baby steps carried me through a year of life altering moments, and I'm still taking them. Every day is another step, another way to make myself better or regress into the person I once was. I am very glad I've chosen to (mostly) keep going and not falling backwards. But the difference now is when I do regress to the old ways of living, I am able to understand where it's coming from and forgive myself for it instead of making it just one more step in the wrong direction. For that I am so thankful.

I am thankful for Steve. I am so thankful that he was the epitome of all the badness I had surrounded myself with in my relationships since I left my parents' home and started playing "adult". Of course, there were a few good ones here and there, but for the most part, Steve was a combination of all the bad ones. He was it. He won the Biggest Asshole Tory's Been With. Ever. Prize. And for that I am thankful.

I had hoped I would be his moment of change. I had really hoped that I would be the thing that he would realize he wanted to hold on to and, in order to do that, work on those things that poisioned him. But it was the other way around.

After it all happened, I had quite a few moments (days, weeks, months) where I asked myself what I had to learn from it, what I had to gain (and yes folks, those moments where I was still the victim and wanted to know what I had done to deserve it...a lot of those, actually). The more I sat with the pain of it, the more I realized what it was I had to learn, to gain, and most importantly, how I put myself in the place to be the victim in the first place. That was the biggest lesson of them all. And it was very painful. It was horribly painful, more so than sleeping in the wet spot he and his woman left on our bed. More painful than the harsh words he wrote to her about me, the lies about me and our marriage, the times he told her he hated me because I kept him from being with her. The knowledge that she was just one of many that had shared his body while he was with me.

The most painful of all was what I had done to myself. What I had looked for in another human and how I could use that to hurt myself. Taking myself out of that victim role was so difficult because I had spent a good number of years of my life living it every day and always wondering why it was happening to me.

I don't have all the answers. I don't even know all the questions yet. I am on a journey that will last as long as it lasts and there is nothing I can do about it. Nothing but hold on, enjoy the random bits of scenery, absorb information around me and never forget. As long as I don't forget what happened in my past I will not relive it in my future.

And for the first time in a long time (maybe ever), I am really looking forward to my future. Because I have one for the first time.