Moving On

The last blogpost included a lot of pondering about forgiveness. Circumstances have moved on. The forgiveness idea has been left far behind. It is no longer relevant - there will be no rapprochment in this situation. Indeed, if anything I am now left wondering how to forgive L for what she has just done as part of wrecking her revenge! G has accepted it, but I (personally) feel I've been made a fool of, and indeed betrayed.

The thing was, L needed access to the flat to get all her stuff. I helped to arrange for G to leave a key for her and not to be there (and I wasn't there either). For some reason, it never occurred to me, that going back into the flat, she wouldn't be able to resist taking further revenge by doing more damage and wrecking G's stuff!

It was pretty bad. Could have been worse - some things she didn't destroy that could have been really difficult (like his passport, ALevel certificates etc), but some symbolic things were torn up (the cats pedigree/birth certificates - that was pretty mean), G's college work was tossed around (not sure if any was spoilt or just made a mess of) and she did actually do some actual (criminal) damage to some of G's property. I guess the worst (in terms of costliness), was wrecking the big TV screen.

There was also broken glass from smashed candleholders all over the kitchen floor, and the electricity had been switched off at the mains, with all the food in the fridge and freezer left to spoil.

We were all pretty shocked. Initially G reacted pretty strongly, and then he insisted B&I leave cos he wanted to deal with it all on his own. In fact he was pretty horrible to us just at that point. Oddly, B hadn't been able to cope with the pain on friday and yesterday, whereas I found I couldn't cope with the anger. So it was my turn to cry.

HOWEVER, later on G texted me - both to apologise, and to assure me that the damage wasn't as bad as it had at first appeared - and we ended up having a wonderful exchange of text messages. I was so heartened and amazed at the way G had moved through both the anguish and the anger to reach an amazing positivity, a commitment to building himself up and reaching into the future to become a whole person in his own right - the best version of himself. And a determination to make the most of his opportunities, including college.

He was also amazing in his understanding of what L had done - accepting that she had needed to vent by wrecking stuff (he takes it as legitimate punishment for what he'd done), and aiming to reassure me that the flat itself (which financially B&I are responsible for as guarantors) hadn't been damaged. He even down-played the loss of the TV - saying he never needed such a big one anyway.

I know it won't be plain sailing. There will be dips and backward steps, and he won't always be able to keep the pain from crashing over him again, or the self-loathing from swallowing him up. But even I now believe the glimmer of hope (of them eventually getting back together) has now gone.

The thing is, for all that they had grown to be a better couple than they used to be, there was still a big weakness - G was always just half a person, clinging to L to complete him. He now needs to learn how to be a whole person in his own right - and then he'll be able to have a healthier relationship with someone down the line. And while he had L, he had focussed too much on just this one person, to the detriment of all his other relationships and networking (including college) - cos he thought he didn't need to bother. So now there's a chance to take something good out of this awful experience.