My Mother

That was probably the best letter I've gotten in a while; it was touching, really, on a lot of levels. My mom and I are more or less the same person but a world apart. She had written me a letter after I spoke with her very briefly about a relationship that ended back in December and my current feelings about what had happened. In the letter, she detailed almost the exact same situation that she had been through, and it was so wonderfully put that I needed to put it up here.


"Well, that sent me into a deep nosedive. I absolutely plummeted into despair and discouragement. It was one thing to end the relationship and to lose him in general. I must have had some fantasy that he would change and become a Christian and we’d get married. What a laugh. But it was another thing altogether to lose that fantasy and to have to starkly face the reality that this was really, really over, and this guy was going to get married and have children, and I was alone. He had chosen someone else, not me.

I can’t tell you how much I hated him. I had never hated anyone like that before, and never since. I felt used, shriveled, worthless, not good enough, and like I was just dying and wasting away. I have poetry from that time (well, maybe I threw it away at some point – I don’t really know) that I actually got college credit for. I felt lost and alone – robbed and beaten and left bleeding. I didn’t feel like the person I was, was even me. I felt like my personhood had been totally given away to this man, and now I was left with nothing. Empty.

Part of the awfulness was that I still felt such strong emotions of love for ed – crazy as that probably sounds. So to try to get over that, I focused all my energy on just hating him for all I was worth. I told myself things that were hateful about him in order to try to push out any feelings of love and desire for him.

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to pursue my relationship with God, which for me (as you know!) often comes in the form of books. So I went to this Christian bookstore, the mustard seed, kind of close to my house, and searched around for something that might help me feel better. I found a book called “healing life’s hurts” by matthew and dennis linn – two catholic priests (or maybe Episcopalian?). I thought, well, maybe that will help me, cuz I am hurt like crazy.

The bottom line of the book was that we need to forgive in order to be healed from all the things that have hurt us. Of course with lots of explanation about how and why! So I realized that this was what I needed to do – that holding on to hate was not going to help me accept the situation and move forward. And the hating thing wasn’t really working for me ….

I don’t remember all of the process I went thru, but I do very specifically remember one day, standing in my bedroom which had a big window overlooking the parking lot (this was in my Wrightwood apartment just west of Clark St.), looking outside, and telling God that I knew I had to, but I just couldn’t forgive Ed because I knew enough about forgiveness from what I’d read and how I’d been brought up, that a person has to hold a certain amount of love for someone in order to forgive. I knew that God forgave me out of great love – and only because of his great love. I knew that forgiveness could not be born out of intense hatred. So I told God, “I can’t forgive him because if I let myself love Ed, I will do something really stupid – I don’t trust myself to love him or like him at all.” And I heard God speak to me in one of the clearest ways I’ve ever heard him, and he said “You will not be loving him out of your own heart, but you will love him through me. It’s not your own love, but my love.” "

-Glenna Ganster

I don't know if i'm there yet. There are days when it's okay and then there are days when I just want what's best for him and then there are days that I hate him and dread to walk by him. It doesn't make much sense, seeing as it was a relatively short term thing. I wish I could write the pages upon pages it would take to describe why it was hurtful, or why Zachary was hurtful. Maybe some day I will write those pages and learn something from them. And I hope that those pages include my own part, in each of these stories that exist, because we all played our parts. We are fools, even the most well intentioned loving, caring, genuine people.

Until then, I will remain somewhat a mess, and allow Jayme into that mess. And hopefully he allows me in to his.