The Velveteen Survivor
This insight came from a betrayed wife…
The priest who performed our wedding ceremony read an excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit during the homily. He read:
"Real isn't how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn't happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
This quote came to my attention again last week. How timely. I have a whole new lens for it now, and it holds new meaning.
Part of me feels our love is "real" and that's why it hasn't died. That's why I have the strength to work through this. Not that it doesn't hurt—because it does hurt—but not how I would have thought it would. I won't let it kill me.
Now that the truth is out (a lot of people knew before I did), our friend group sees my husband as a monster. I know the reality: He did terrible things—monstrously horrible things—to me. But I can still see the humanity in him. I can still see there's beauty in his heart, in his remorse. He's not ugly to me.
And I am strong, not easily broken. That's why I'm surviving this.
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