You Can Be Grateful and Still Not Want a Relationship
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting The Reflecting Pool Chronicles.
The family was chatting about various films as we discussed the current lack of creativity in the movie industry. We lamented about how we hadn’t been to the movies in a while, trying to remember the last one we saw. My contribution to the conversation was that I couldn’t understand this lack of creativity when there are so many amazing books that could be turned into movies. Granted, the movie isn’t an original idea, but how the director and actors bring it to life is.
One of my favorite ways to stay entertained is to specifically find and read books that are being adapted into motion pictures. The book MUST be read before watching the movie and seeing how the story comes alive on screen is something that I love. Of course, as many other readers feel, the movie never compares to the book, but I have found a few that are pretty close. I’m always looking for the next great “aliving” of a book in theaters.
Within this particular conversation, I was retelling a story I have mentioned various times to the kids, but not so much to my husband. I had always struggled with reading and was pulled out of 5th grade to be homeschooled with suspected dyslexia and ADHD. Reading was exhausting for me on every level. If we were assigned 10 pages of reading for homework, it would take me an hour to read 2-3 pages and getting to full 10 pages each night was like Mt. Everest. Falling behind day after day, I quickly developed disinterest in and an avoidance of reading. Obviously, I had to continue reading throughout my schooling years, but choosing to read out of enjoyment was foreign to me.
My ex-husband was an avid reader, though. Science fiction was his genre, but he read an assortment of books. One book he found intriguing was The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. He was never a religious person, so the idea that he was intrigued by a historical fiction novel about Jesus surprised me. When I learned the movie was coming out and starring Tom Hanks, it was my turn to be intrigued because I’ll watch just about anything Hanks is in.
The movie was set to come out while my ex was away for the military and he had the opportunity to watch it then. I wanted to watch it with him since it was such a highly regarded book to him and asked him not to watch it until he returned, since it would still be in theaters. He agreed and I did not tell him my secret plan.
Since he had read the book and I knew books were more detailed than movies, I was concerned I wouldn’t understand the movie based on how he described the book (didn’t spoil the ending, though). I didn’t want to disrupt his enjoyment of the movie because I had a million questions. So, I secretly decided to read the book myself while he was away and surprise him with that once we were finally able to see it.
This was a huge undertaking for me because I had honestly never fully read a novel on my own at this point. However, I cared about my ex at the time and really wanted to do this for him. As I began reading the book, I was immediately absorbed into the world Dan Brown had created for the character Robert Langdon and I could NOT put it down. I finished the book and was hungry for the next in the Langdon story. I ended up reading the entire series and it remains one of my favorites to this day. This small act of love for my ex changed my hate of reading into one of my favorite things to do to this day.
As I recounted the story, a twinge of gratitude sparked in my heart. I suddenly stopped telling my story and thought about what I was experiencing. I felt actual gratitude in my heart for my abusive ex. Not the familiar kind that I have been trying to convince myself to be grateful, hoping one day I finally will….this was that one day. Gaining an understanding of what exactly I was feeling, I decided to say it out loud, just to make sure it felt real. You know how sometimes you just have to hear it out loud to fully accept it? That.
My pause in the conversation was brief, but I began again with “I am grateful for [ex’s name] because his love of reading got me to love reading,” and I meant every word.
I acknowledged the change and how good it felt to actually feel that way while my family cheered for my positive change. I have healed out loud to them for several years now and I am proud in this moment to be the example to them that if you put in the work, healing will happen. This moment of genuine gratitude didn’t just come from that brief story; it came from years and years of working to change my perspective. That encounter with gratitude sparked more and more to come.
The more I allowed the gratitude to come, I realized it wasn’t changing my perspective anymore; this felt more like finally seeing what had always been there. I was just willing to see it now and that was the biggest change. It is okay to feel positive feelings towards someone who has hurt you. Do I want to go running into my ex’s arms because of how positive I view him? Ew. No. But does my mind feel better when I think about him? Yes, yes it does.