What makes your life worth living?

I just found this in the wrong folder on my computer.  I found it really moving since I’d forgotten  about some of these feelings.   I wrote it during our weekend at Retrouvaille--a marriage encounter workshop where we went to “try to save our marriage.”  In reality my ex was trying to feel less guilty about cheating on me:

The question I was supposed to write to him about was “What was the most significant part of the weekend for me?”

The 90 minute exercise about what made life worth living.   I only got through 45 minutes of it but it was one of the most painful experiences of my life. I don’t really remember too well what I wrote, but it was terribly bleak and desperate and negative. I usually think of myself as an optimistic person with many reasons to live, but all of a sudden the bottom fell out for me. I think what you said to me before we went to bed the night before really hit me hard. I cried and cried and cried that morning until I fell down on the bed and just about went to sleep. I think there may be a very bleak part of me that I’m not really in touch with. Maybe I just pretend to be so optimistic and positive. I’m also a depressive. I remember once my mother said to me that she felt terribly pessimistic about life and I found it hard to believe her since her general attitude was so upbeat. Maybe I’ve inherited that secret cynicism and pessimism.

I think that question was so powerful also because it forced me to come to grips with how I really felt about you. In some ways I was still going along to get along where you were concerned. I was staying with you out of habit and fear of leaving and to do what was best for our daughter. I didn’t realize I felt that bleak about our marriage, I hadn’t confronted my hopelessness up until that point. I hadn’t thought about it that much, maybe because it was too painful. That question forced me to face all the pain I was still blocking out. I wonder if I have to feel it again and again to finally get rid of it.

What I wrote wasn’t totally true of course. Today I feel that I have a reason to live. I also have hope that we can rescue our relationship. Part of the significance of that question was your response to what I wrote. It was the first time I felt you acknowledged what I’d gone through and showed real remorse and some desire for forgiveness. I felt I’d finally gotten through to you–that I wasn’t just blowing off steam for no reason.

That question and my response to it also gave me insights into why I avoid this kind of work. It’s like why I desperately wanted to avoid being there when my mother was dying. You think of me as courageous, and in some ways I am. But when it comes to intense emotional pain I go to great lengths to avoid it. I feel that I’m a coward when it comes to this kind of pain–I just want to escape–read a book–watch tv–anything but feel my feelings. This is why I never kept a journal although it’s the kind of thing a writer should naturally do. I have a couple of journals left from when I was young and they’re very intense and very incomplete. A few entries and then I give up…