At 77 What Do I Regret? Please read if you are young. You may learn.
I am a 77 year old widow. I was married for over 55 years to a man who didn’t love me. He never wanted to sleep with me, he rarely cuddled me, he was never faithful, he was never an active father to our daughter, he never took care of the house or financial matters.
He did work steadily and brought home a paycheck. I had no siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents: they all died when I was a young child.
My parents had thrown me out when I was 15 because I slept with my boyfriend once. (No, I did not get pregnant.)
They called me vile names, locked me in my room and I was not allowed to finish school. My self esteem was totally gone and I never fully recovered it.
I married when I had trouble getting a job after I went back to school and graduated, and had no money coming in.
I had nobody to “fall back on”, if my marriage failed, so I pretended it was OK. My husband criticized me for: being too fat; being too thin; being too anxious; being too complacent; being too smart, being too stupid.
Those were only a few of the things he said, but they saved my life, because even in my misery, I knew it was IMPOSSIBLE to be all of those things at one time!
He turned our only child against me. She was jealous of me and hated me because I had very high intelligence. He always backed her up and never disciplined her even by talking to her about how she treated me.
He totally blamed me for the failure of our marriage (for all those reasons), but he was the one who would not work at being in counseling, so therapists ended the counseling for that reason. In short, I was a COWARD.
Five years ago he had open heart surgery, a cerebral stroke (permanent brain damage), permanently deserted me, completely cut me out of his will, isolated me and would not let me contact him at all and I was left indigent and too old to be hired, although for many years I’d had a successful career.
Then he finally died without saying a word to me. My life has been lived and wasted.
YOU MUST BE STRONG AND FEARLESS, EVEN IF IT ALMOST KILLS YOU. You have to take risks and not cower, because otherwise PEOPLE WILL TREAT YOU AS BADLY AS YOU ALLOW THEM TO TREAT YOU.