What about the Anger?

A friend asked me a question after reading my blog, they wanted to know about the anger I feel toward my husband. I think I surprised her by my answer when I told her that those feelings are long gone, but that does not mean that there are not other feelings to deal with. Yes, there was anger, anger when you are awakened out of a sound sleep with law enforcement officers banging on your door at 6:00 am in the morning to serve a search warrant. At the time though, there are so many more powerful emotions going on such as fear, worry for your children, and isolation that anger is lost in the background. It is only later that you must have to deal with the anger.

Throughout this whole ordeal I have been told that I am going through different stages of the grieving process, it seems with every new "event" it starts all over. In my case, I felt angry when the impact of what was going on really began to sink in, but at the same time, because I had known my husband for almost 20 years, my concern was helping him get through this. Someone needed to be there for him. Enough of the world was mad at him, it would serve no good for me to be angery with him too. That is not to say that throughout the year before his incarceration we did not fight, I did not yell and we did not argue about what happened, we did.
However, knowing him as long as I have, knowing his past, knowing his life, I can see where the events lined up that lead him to make these choices. I am not excusing his behavior at all but I can understand how some people make different decisions based on their background.

The anger I feel now is directed at those people who have disappointed me and my family throughout the past year. The people who you thought would stand by you no matter what, the people that you thought you could always count on, they are the ones who hurt me more everyday. That pain continues everytime they make a feable attempt at contact. My husband has apologized, agonized and cried over the choices he has made and the place he has left his family in, but we are living through that everyday, moving on, and looking toward a brighter future. He knows he can never make up for the fear and anxiety I now feel everytime I hear an unusual noise or an unexpected knock on the door, or the time that he will miss of his childrens lives. He will have to live with what he has done to his family for the rest of his life. He is being punished enough, what more would my continued anger do? I can say that I have forgiven him, he has worked hard to be a better person and has changed so much before his sentencing, but I may never forget what he has done and that is something I have to live with. As humans, forgiveness is something that we can give, it is one of the greatest gifts we can give, but that does not mean that we forget.