Bitterness: To be upset and angry by something that happened in the past.

Bitterness:To be consumed with anger and unhappiness

My definition: Bitterness: To allow anger and unhappiness, because of something that has happened in the past, define your future.

I have said in some of my previous posts that I was not prepared to let what had happened to me (and at the beginning it was about me, remember? I had to find myself and be myself first) define me. I was not prepared to be dragged down to other people’s levels and, more than anything, I was not prepared to let my life be consumed by bitterness.

Since ‘The War’ my sister Louise has said to me that she initially wanted me to have Danny back because I ‘wasn’t getting any better’.

Before ‘The War’ I had always been the type of girl to pick myself back up, move forward, even meet someone else; but this time during the twenty-one days that Danny was gone I was still the same as the day he had left.

Yes I had took all of our money, I had left Danny with nothing. I had started divorce proceedings, I had sold his’ possessions to do so. I had changed the locks, thrown his stuff out, everything I could possibly do. But I was still crying, every day, nearly all day. So when Danny wanted to come back my sister (I have said before she is a clever cow sometimes!) had persuaded me to have him back because, as she said: ‘Then if you split up it will be on your terms and not his; and then you will be  able to move on.’ She was right! I can see that even now. If we had not survived I would have least been able to prepare for it, to know that what we had was gone and more importantly that I did not want it anymore, enabling me to move forward.

But if Danny had not come back I would have struggled to come to terms with what had happened: to understand how I ended up where I was and I would have continued to run it through my head like a loop, trying to make sense of something that would never have made sense – because it had never been what I thought it was in the first place!

At the beginning the stubborn streak in me, the fighter in me, was not prepared to let that bitch take any more from me than she already had: and part of that was that I was not prepared to be consumed by bitterness: I did not want that anger to stay with me forever, and I did not want to be unhappy forever, and that was what would have happened if I had become bitter.

So, yes, at the beginning it was these things that made me fight against being bitter, and this fight meant that I looked at all the small, tiny things that Danny did: like the housework FFS! A note written on the blackboard in the kitchen, reaching out to hold my hand, even though he feared that I would pull it away. These small tiny things made up a big thing over time (you will see) and eventually the big thing enabled us to get to where we are today.

What would have happened if Danny had not come back? I would have done the same, I think it would have taken a damn site longer, but the stubborn fighter in me would have still thought the same: I will not be beaten: and part of this was I would not be bitter.

As time wore on I no longer used ‘her’ as the incentive; I no longer needed to. I had found ‘me’ again: I had decided what my boundaries were and what I would and would not put up with, and I knew that what had happened to me had made me stronger: had actually given me freedom. I wanted to enjoy what I had found, so there was no room for bitterness in my life.

It is up to you all, I cannot tell you how to handle things this is only one way that I did:

At the beginning I used my anger at ‘her’  to stop me from becoming bitter.

At the beginning I used my stubborness to stop me from being bitter

As time wore on I found myself, and part of that was seeing myself, and reflecting on myself; and I knew that I didn’t need to be bitter: I needed to be grateful.

I realised what I had was something new, and that it was better than it had been before because this time it was honest Read here

This meant realising that Danny was not a knight on a white horse in shiny armour, but a flawed man who made mistakes and got on my tits sometimes!

I am passionate about this particular post, because I know how easy it is to slip down that slippery bitterness pipe; to be sucked in by the whispers from the demon that tell you that you are ‘entitled to feel that way.’ And also by the people who have become bitter: they’re miserable they want you to be miserable right? Fuck that!

So are you bitter? Do you feel entitled be bitter? Is it all somebody else’s fault that you are bitter? Do you want to feel that way forever? Only you have control over it.

If you need to do what I did and use the other person as a focus for not being consumed by bitterness, then do that – don’t let them beat you; and before you know it you will just not be bitter any more and you won’t give a toss about them! But only you can do it.

I know that there enough fighters out there who will read this and think ‘That is not going to be me! I am not going to let this beat me. I am not going to let this define me. I will not let bitterness consume me.’

I know you can do it. I did.

Rosie

 

 

 

 

 

Making This Better the book is now available including the journal entries for the first 5 years of our recovery & the whole 21 days of ‘The War’. Available internationally in paperback and ebook  at Amazon and Barnes & Noble also available at Xlibris and Apple Books for iPad and Waterstones Bookstores for click & collect

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