I Finally Asked My Ex-Husband For Forgiveness…

I think I can begin to forgive myself.

My ex-husband is an amazing guy. Terrific. Salt of the Earth, incredible person. We were together for ten years, and we have a daughter together who passed away from SIDS twenty years ago.

The woman I became after she passed, I speak of her often. I was an oxycodone junkie, functional alcoholic, and complete fuck-up for years. I ruined two marriages, both to great guys. I had nothing left inside me, so I threw pills into the canyon and tried to pretend that I was trying to live, that I was in any way gripping firmly on functionality.

I wouldn’t have put up with me.

I was chaos, just destructive and simultaneously barely keeping it together, and I treated my ex-husband like the enemy. Not just in the capacity of a marriage, but later, when he really could have used my friendship. I feel I’m fortunate I can’t remember a lot of the scenarios, because I was constantly fucked up beyond all recognition. I stayed that way for eight or nine years, and who knows how many shenanigans I pulled during that time.

I am glad I don’t remember many of them, that the oxycodone body blocked for me, and kept me in a haze that doubled as a lifejacket. I couldn’t handle the weight of my own sorrow. It was an iron albatross.

I’ve been told stories of some of the more spectacular displays of stupidity. Not my proudest moments, and the way I treated my ex-husband can make me cry anytime I think about it.

And yet, even still

I’m the one who left him. Years, he just took it. He loved me in the most absolute fashion. It was just disguised as an everyday marriage, but he thought I was the smartest woman he knew. He was proud of me. And he believed in me.

I’ve never really had that since. Who am I kidding? Nothing that is as easy and natural as he and I were would have a sequel. I’m resigned to it, I wasted what I was given, and some people never find that even once.

I write a column every year on our daughter’s birthday. Some years, I fare better than others, but last year wasn’t one of them. I sent my ex-husband the column, and we had some back and forth. Two messages in, and I…