Projecting

"It's called projecting," my counselor said to me from her chair across the room.

I had over-read a response from his aunt in which she stated, "could she try anti-depressants?  Is that an option?"  So, like is to be expected, he has told his friends and family that the problem is all me.  He's told me over and over again that I am always depressed.  When you hear it enough, you begin to wonder if it's true.  Am I depressed?

"He's not ready to see his own issues, but they are there, so he will project them on to you for now."

Yes.  He gets to dump the blame, the problems, the responsibility on me.  And I will hold them, like a handbag.  That's what it's been like for most of this relationship.

How can his friends and family not see this?  How can his aunt and uncle who saw him through his screwed-up childhood ever imagine that a person who has been through so much can grow up to NOT have any issues?  How can they not see that I might actually be the more stable one out of the two of us?

"You can look at this as a gift, Amy.  You are now free to discover who you were meant to be.  Who God intended you to be."

I sit there in fear.  "But," I blubber while tears seep out of my eyes and run down my face, "what if he doesn't like the me I'm meant to be?  What if I do that and he really doesn't want to come back?"

"Amy," she says, a gentle smile softening her face.  "He's already rejected the you you tried to be for him.  What harm is there in now being the you you are supposed to be?"

It hurts.  It hurts so bad to hear that and know that and feel that rejection over and over again.  He didn't want the real me, so I hid it behind a me I thought he'd like.  He didn't want that me either.

"You've changed for him," my mom shares with me over the phone on another day.  "For some reason, you are compelled to him and will do whatever it takes to hold on to him.  But you need to be who you are meant to be.  He needs attention.  And we can understand why.  When he's in a room, the whole room needs to belong to him.  When he's in a room, he grows and you shrink.  You need to find who you are without him.  You need to stop shrinking."

I don't think it's bad to change for someone in small ways.  We make allowances for one another.  We grow together in change.  I thought that's what I was doing.  In many ways, I still feel that's what I have done.  However, hearing these truths from not just one person, but four different people completely unrelated to one another, it makes me have to face it.  Who am I really?

If I am not his wife, who am I?  Who was I supposed to be?  Who am I supposed to be now?