Coming back to LaSalle usually gives me a Bittersweet feeling. It's beautiful here. It's wild and open full of life. Today we saw otters and maybe beavers, Canada geese, swallows, cardinals, Blue Jays, wood ducks, and turtles I can hear songbirds and woodpeckers and frogs. There are some people out on the water but it's mostly silent. This place s o o t h s my soul as much as it ever did. It also brings back memories from my marriage. It reminds me of peaceful times walking together out here. Sometimes we used to take night hikes. It was originally Ted's idea to bring the dogs out here in the winter time and let them run. Every time I come here I have to Grapple with those memories compared to the reality of how my marriage really was. I'm trying to come to terms with knowing that two things can be true at the same time. On the w h o l e, my marriage sucked. Ted is not a good man and he went out of his way to hurt me. He saw to it that everything I tried to do got ruined, and almost every dream was thwarted. I lived through a lot of pain. But it's also true that those years were studded with good moments. There are happy memories. My memory holds snapshots of good, pure, real moments. They were there. They were fleeting. Ted simply didn't have the wherewithal for the innate character to be the man I needed over the long term. Those good moments were few and far between. Even though I tried, I couldn't string them together into an overall good marriage. I'm pretty sure I have journaled about something like this before every time I come back here it strikes me again.