Does a Past Define You?

To move forward is to heal

My boyfriend is not perfect. I am not perfect. We have both made more mistakes than we can count, but often of a different nature. I think that although mistakes carry various consequences in society and in our lives, they do not always carry different weights. The "sins" of my past haunt me and bring me guilty feelings just as much as the next person. I have trouble understanding the things that my boyfriend has done and experienced in his life. I am sure he has the same problem with me. I kept telling myself that I wanted to know everything about him, but when I started hearing about his past it would make me feel uneasy, even slightly disturbed. We were raised so differently, that some things are very hard for me to fathom. I am told over and over again, that if I want our relationship to work, that I must leave his past in the past. I must not blame him in the present, nor carry into the future, that of yesterday. I understand this concept, but something always nags at me. I think it is the question of  do the experiences of our pasts, our blunders and even our triumphs, do they define our character? Our personality? What will stop us from behaving in the same manner in the present? In the future?

I find myself not wanting to know about certain things from Isaac's past, but not knowing also brings me distress. I guess the crux of all this, is that fact that when you are in a relationship with someone who is incarcerated, your time, your communication, your affection is all dictated. One phone call only lasts 15 minutes and can cost $10. You can write letters until your hearts content, but he must be equipped with paper, stamps, envelopes, etc... and the reply may not come for weeks or not at all. He may avoid or forget to answer questions you ask. Visits are also limited and often too short to speak your mind regarding a serious subject. So I sit wondering, ruminating over what is fact and what is fiction. I feel suffocated by a lack of free communication. Stifled by the fact that someone else is governing our relationship. But then I must remind myself that I chose to put myself in this situation. I choose daily to stand by him, to be supportive, to live with the ambiguity. 

I will freely admit that throughout the months, that have turned into a year, that have turn into longer, I have discovered information, information that breaks my heart, that both fascinates and horrifies me. Isaac has lived in a way that is foreign to me, surviving by lying, by using, by bouncing around from place to place. He has held an anger so deep inside him that ironically he appears numb at times. If you look at a timeline of his life it goes from tragedy to tragedy, woman to woman, lie to lie. It is a carefully woven tapestry of dysfunction, but actually a quite amazing tale of persistence and survival. At first Isaac would not own this past. He made light of much of its happenings. He had a strong desire to paint himself and his actions in a positive light. Who wouldn't want to? We all want to put our best self forward. We want to be appealing. He has always had great charm, and quite definitely crushed a few girls hearts with his carelessness. This included mine in the beginning of our time together. We were strangers and he let me down. It was very painful,even from someone I did not know. It consumed me wondering where I had went wrong, what was my deficit that Isaac could walk away from me without so much as a phone call. Then I would vacillate between realizing perhaps this pain this hurt, was not mine to hold, that the seemingly cruel or caring actions of a man I had known for such a short period of time were not promised, not owed to me. Isaac was doing what his past had taught him to do: to drift. I pondered this often. I wondered if I had been too hard on myself and on him for the mistakes of those days. Maybe I had forgotten how our chance meeting was totally supposed to be limited and benign in my mind as well. What gave me the right to judge from such a high pedestal. I was not perfect.

I had been chasing men from date to date, relishing in the fact that they chased me, wanted to sleep with me, wanted to want me and for a few hours at a time I felt like a worthwhile person. I freely admit as well that my past is full of mild manipulation, various blunders, negative patterns of interacting with others. I have lingered in so much selfishness, yet ironically had openly devoted myself to the care of others. I lived as an oxymoron for so long. I would desire being pursued, would shatter the illusion that I was coy and proper, and then honestly go on to the next man. I would be ditched, dumped, discarded, set aside, and used by so many men yet continued along my journey to the next one without a second thought. Why was Isaac's betrayal of my feelings so horrible? You see to me, THIS is all the past I see at times. How he hurt me, and the uncovering of more of his transgressions from even before me seem justifiable for me to use because I boldly state that it is evidence for the examination of character! My self-righteous and often frantic desire to "understand" what has gone wrong in my past brings me to this point. Here are the facts: I have lied, I have deceived, I have not cared. Isaac has lied, avoided, manipulated, used. We are not so different in practice, but perhaps in circumstance. I am left wondering: can our deeds be measured against each other? Can our pasts be ranked? Can I have justification for what I feel are wrongs? Can he infer how I will behave while in our relationship? So back to my question, does a past define you? Does it determine the person you will be? Is change truly possible in the incarceration setting? Is the love they profess, the change they promise all just the dreaded jail talk? Can the behaviors, the patterns that we have learned, that have kept us alive, can they be easily manipulated? Easily destroyed or morphed into positive coping mechanisms? As I said Isaac is not perfect. I am not perfect. We have imperfect pasts. At this moment in time, this single path I linger on, all I can do is either wonder, act, forget, or forgive. And if it is forgiveness I chose, then I must actually forgive, because to continue to hold one captive for that which I claimed to have forgiven, is not forgiveness at all.