Breaking Vows

Everyday we make a choice to be the better person. The ideal “good” person that most of society wishes to be. Whether it’s our own moral code, moral standards taught to us by our parental figures, religious backgrounds or whatever.
No mater what code you stand by, we all have our own idea of what a “good person” is.

We wake up to start our day and the choices are there.
Stretched out before us like a map of tangled roads.
Every single choice matters.
The chance to strike up a conversation in a cafe could irrevocably alter your life forever.
He or she could be your soulmate, a psychopath or a random person to simply pass out of your life.
You make or don’t make the choice to light that cigarette which could calm your nerves or shorten your life.

We make promises to ourselves which are easily broken because no one else has to know.
The promises we make to others, spoken out loud, seem to be carried out into the universe for all to hear.
So why then do we break them?

When is it okay to break these promises? When we promise to keep and to hold until only death can separate you, can you break that vow and simply walk away and when does it become acceptable?

Some people stay in relationships for codependent reasons. Others in fear of a higher power forbidding it or simply because of the moral standards of their peers and the shame that comes with breaking a promise.

Most of my friends, such as myself, come from a home of broken vows.
“..to have and to hold..”
Lasted six years with my biological parents.
A year after their divorce, they were both remarried.
I was tossed from home to home, plane ride to plane ride, holidays and summers, till I was 16 and had enough.
Then in my 20’s, saw those marriages end with not a bang
But something closer to a slow burn. The light in my parents eyes was strangulated as if all the oxygen in their lives was pulled away.
As our great president George Bush once said:
“Fool me once, shame on me....
...fool me twice.. shame on me. “

Best quote ever. Period.

Not only did my parents, now six in the mix, took on huge mental blows by making these choices to separate, but they left their children (myself and younger brother) reeling from the experience of the loss of family, of unity and faith in anything lasting the test of time.
It makes you think of the depths of relationships.
What makes and breaks them.

It goes without saying, my parents relationships had problems. In retrospect, nothing that couldn’t have been settled.
My mother and step dad, for example, I never thought in my wildest dreams that their marriage would have ended.
I still wear my step dads wedding ring to this day. Maybe to remind myself of a real love that once was there, real.
To me, as a child, a teen and young adult, they madly loved each other and cared about the other in a way that was inspiring.

And just like that, family is lost.

When do We walk away from deteriorating marriages?
When he or she stop writing you poetry?
When the other person stops saying I love you?
The first time he or she raises their hand to your face?
..Or the second time?
When he or she called you a whore?
Where do you draw that line of forgiveness and when is enough, enough?
What about children being effected by that loss?
When does it become acceptable to break those vows?

Recently my mom called.
Out of the blue she apologized for what she had “done” by divorcing my step dad.
I told her it’s not my place to inquire about other people’s relationships.
No one knows what it’s like to be a whole other person, in another relationship.
We only learn from our own experiences, as ourselves, with our own morals, our very limited perspectives, through two eyes.

Thanks for reading.

Much Love,
Elise xoxo