l1vingdeadgurl

I have spent the last week keeping myself occupied at work as much as possible. Calling as many clients as possible; doing anything to keep myself off this site. I believe as much as I love it here I need some time away. The memories are everywhere and I need to not think about them anymore.
One big huge thing came out of these last few days. The last remaining secret in my "vault" came out. I told my husband the secret that has haunted me for 11 years. I was terrified of what he would think but it was the right thing to do, to take a step to recovering my sense of self. Of course who else was I going to tell? Our relationship is far from perfect but he acccepts me and all my absurdity. He doesn't like it, but he accepts it and thats halfway to a happy life. Now this secret will never ever leave either of our lips but it gets a huge burden off my shoulder.
I have spent some time thinking about love and the true definition. I certainly don't know myself. I am having epiphany after epiphany about life and love and where I want to be. The dictionary has words such as "longing" and "desire" to describe love. "Affection" and "Passionate Attraction". All of these words don't define my experiences in love.
So what does?
Everyone has their own experiences in love, and whether it be something learned or something you know instantly what constitutes true love? Am I not able to feel these descriptive feelings because I never grew up with love, only chaos and untruth.
I am not saying I don't love my husband. I married him because at the time I couldn't imagine someone else completing my life the way he did. I went into this marriage not as an individual though, as a unit, as a woman with two children from a previous relationship. So three years down the road I question whether the love for him was because of the love he had for the "unit". Did I marry him because he was an amazing dad? Because I felt no one else would love me? Because all I ever wanted in my life was for someone to say those 4 little words, and spent much of my young adulthood convinced that day would never come? Or did I deeply and truly love him because he completed ME? My mother was an extremely selfish person. She stayed with an abusive alcoholic because she didn't want to be alone. She didn't care that her kids, the children she carried for 9 months, were being abused by this loser. It was all about HER. How SHE couldn't be ALONE and OMG how can I manage as a single mother. I hate her for this. I hate her for making me feel selfish too. Only I am selfish in a different way. I want to appease my own personal feelings of affection and attraction and desire, and forget about how my children would feel if their mother just ran away one day. On a whim, with someone she thinks she loves but doesn't know. The difference is I would never let my children suffer in an obvious way. Yet I dont even think twice of attempted suicide and delusions of granduer. I dont believe these things will hurt them because they never happened to me.