oh bla di

If I'm learning from mistakes, I'm gonna learn a lot from the past... oh I don't know... 4-8 years... I mean 25.

It's really hard to admit you are wrong. I think it's even harder to admit when you are hurtful. It's harder yet to admit not only were you wrong, you were hurtful AND you didn't try the hardest you could to make things right.

This is where I am. I'm not the kind of person to deny when I have messed up. I think on one hand that commands respect from people, and on the other it welcomes condemnation and criticism. It's easier for people to condemn you if you actually own up to all your shit, and its definitely easier for them to criticize your actions if everyone can see them.

I have certainly messed up in more ways than one in the past year, scratch that, more ways than I can count, but I see it. I know it, and I'm in the very hard process of learning from all of it. I made even more mistakes in the years before. Some mistakes I would gladly take back no questions asked, and some I could never fully regret because they lead me to life changing love, invaluable lessons, or foundation making memories.

I failed in my marriage. I didn't just fail this last year, I failed from the start. I started unprepared, unaware, and definitely not even close to ready. I built four years of love, happiness, heartache, anger, beauty, and stifled dreams with my best friend. Those years are most important because they produced the best things either of us will ever know, our two sweet girls. But in the end I believe I didn't have what it took to be that wife, to give that love, that my friend, my husband, needed. My only regret now is the pain I caused and the lack of effort I put in to fix what was broken from the start. I can't ever know if I really had what was needed inside, because honestly, I didn't give it everything. I wish that just for the sake of my precious babies that I could say I gave it all I had. Every inch of my body, every stretch of my emotions, every working of my mind, but I didn't.

So the struggle comes now to grieve the lack of effort I gave them, to grieve the lack of effort I gave for myself. But from that, to learn, learn more than I ever have. The biggest life lesson I have ever encountered. It's a complex lesson, it has more than just one aspect, it has many, and its painful, but it's good. So very good.

I made my choice this year, the choice to give something up. That choice is done. My life holds a new choice, to make the life I already went after the best it can possibly be for my children, myself and their father, my friend. To me, there is no other choice. I can only work towards making it the best it can be. To make peace, to ask for forgiveness, to bring stability and love, this is my aim. This is my goal and I'll be damned if anyone gets in the way of it. My children will know two parents who love each other and more than anything in this entire universe, love them.

This is harder than anything I've gone through. It's so hard to be wrong, to recognize mistakes, to feel regret, to know you were hurtful, to admit you didn't give everything you could, especially to your children. But what's hard makes us grow, what we lack makes us learn, and the way we change and overcome is what not only makes us who we are, it passes on to our children. So let the condemnation and criticism come, because no one knows my mistakes and knows my wrongs more than myself, and as a result of that truth they can't hurt me or shake me. No one could be more disappointed in me, than myself. I don't need anyone else's disapproval to get the message, to learn the lesson.

Sometimes it feels like I never stop making mistakes, and sometimes I feel so defeated I almost don't remember how to move forward, but the truth is, everyone makes mistakes, it's just that most people don't let anyone see theirs. So everyone sees mine, it's out in the open, at least that makes it easier to own up to and easier to become better from. Stay tuned, and you'll probably see me fail again, but I'm not worried about my future failures because this time I know that the most important thing is to give everything I do, everything I have. I know that this way no failure can be in vain.