Hurt

This might be the hardest blog I'll ever write.  The most painful.  But some people meditate.  Some jog.  I write.  I write the way some people cry (or the way I cry sometimes)... until I'm exhausted and spent and poured out.  Because this is how I survive.  This is me.

I am divorced.  Those words jar me still.  I am divorced. 

Be gentle, dear reader... you will come to this with your own biases and viewpoints.  You'll be colored by your religion or your parents' divorce or marriage or your own divorce or marriage.  But understand that I am not writing this to solicit your opinion.  But because this is how I survive.  And because, what if, in my honesty, I touch just one person.  Just one.  One who feels alone.  One who decides to stay in their marriage or leave.  One who decides to forgive their own mom or dad.  Or not.

This was the most painful decision I have ever made.  I hurt a good man.  I have two young children.  I am now alone and scared and hoping to build a stronger, better, more open me... so I can be the mother I want to be.  But I will not soft-sell it, readers.  For those of you who have weighed or are weighing the same doubts, I will not lie.  This is hell. 

Why go through it then?  You're shaking your heads.  You're tsk-tsking my selfishness.  You're cheering me on.  You're utterly confused.  You're proud of me.  I am all of these with you readers.  Given a different day, a different hour... I am all of these.

Today, as my son who is struggling mightily with anxiety cried and said he was thinking of giving up baseball, a wave far too large to surf hit me.  Guilt consumed me.  Sadness took over.  I'm watching this little boy, always too old for his age, struggle with things even bigger.  His anxiety has become so bad he stopped in practice today because I had to leave to take his sister to gymnastics.  He refuses to get out of my car in the morning because he's scared to go to school.  He wants me in the bathroom with him when he showers.  And these are the moments I think, "I've destroyed him."

Never mind that two years ago we already went through this with him.  I'm convinced it's all my fault.  Never mind that it was the counselor two years ago that he saw who started the flurry of doubt that snowballed into the avalanche of my divorce.  "He's very anxious mommy and so are you," she said pointedly, "what is going on IN YOUR HOME?".  All the blood drained when she asked that and I felt dizzy.  One year later, another counselor, this time my daughter's asked that SAME question.  Verbatim.  "What is going on IN YOUR HOME?".

The current counselor he's seeing, when I told her of these previous counselors said to us, "the home with an unnamed stress is often more damaging to a child than one where parents fight or yell... because now they are anxious and have no idea why".

Mike, my husband, and I were good friends.  We are still, or are trying to be.  And no, not just for the kids.  Because we care.  I love him.  Very much.  I had so wished, often in this process, to split myself in two.  To give him a wife who could love him properly and stay.  It was hard to admit to myself and him that we did not bring out the best in each other.  We did not.  We walked on eggshells.  We retreated from one another and have from very early on in our 18 1/2 years together.  We were very good at being separate.  We had a stressed home.  There was no fighting or ugliness between us, but it was not peaceful.  We all yelled.  All four of us.  About getting ready, coming to the table, getting to school, even going to fun places.  We yelled.  We all had short fuses and fought one another.  About spills or toys or time or... whatever.  We fought one another. On everything.  In a moment of horrifically painful honesty, Mike and I talked about how we both knew it and could feel it.. but we didn't face it.  We didn't ask the hard questions.  We didn't face the truth.

There will be those who console you and say it's not a failure or a death.  Those, like me, who say they became thankful their parents divorced so that they weren't raised in a stressful home.  But there will be the days like today, where it won't matter.  I do feel like I failed.  I am grieving and in my grief I feel like an even bigger failure because, how to you help broken kids when you are broken as well?

And those of you who disagree with my decision are now angry.  You are saying, "You should not have left then!!  You horrible mother for breaking your children."  But what do I do about the breakages that existed before this?  What excuse do I offer for children who both had to see therapists by the age of 5?  I have to believe that, in the long run, the short term pain will be worth it.  In our parenting class, in a video, a family court judge who had been a counselor and mediator said, "Divorce does not destroy children.  How you handle it does.  Children all have to learn how to handle change.  Huge moves.  Deaths.  Divorce.  It is all change.  How will you handle it so they learn from it?"

This is where I am.  How do I make sure it becomes their moment to learn to handle change?  How do I show them that sometimes, the hard way is the way that leads to the best outcome?  I was not the best me nor the best mother I could be.  Anxiety about my marriage was weighing me down and grinding me into a shell of my former self.  And, although he may not agree, it was not helping Mike become who he could be.  He had lost himself too.  And, in turn, our anxiety flowed down to our children.  And they were stressed.  Little anxiety balls of behavioral issues that came and went.   I want our kids to find better.  I want them to reach high, be brutally, openly, nakedly honest.  I want them to have the courage to take the roads that lead to the best versions of themselves they can possibly be.  I want to set that example.

Some of you will agree that this is the example I'm setting.  Some of you will think what I'm telling them is "give up! walk away" and that I am not teaching them the importance of self-sacrifice.

Think what you will.  I love my children.  I have poured my heart and time into their feeding and growth and play and therapies and imaginations from day one.  I have tried to let them be kids.  Play without worrying about messes.  Explore and ask questions.  Dance (literally) in the rain.  Hunt for worms.  Do science experiments.  Read, read, read.  Make friends with others regardless of their "popularity" status.  Enjoy how different everyone is rather than fearing it.

But now I have a new lesson to teach.  And it hurts like hell.  For there is no way, for tiny beings with such a short time on this earth, who haven't experienced how sometimes something that seems so painful in the beginning, can be right, to understand this now.  And so I must be patient.  I must love them.  And I must hold it together while the guilt consumes, the sadness washes over me, the judgements pour in and the self-doubt paralyzes.   I will lose friends... either because they are angry with me or just so uncomfortable they don't know what to do or say.  And in all this, I must keep it together until my kids are asleep and then, as I did tonight, let myself grieve.  In huge sobs.  Alone in my kitchen.  I have to let myself feel.  And then I have to clean myself up.  Clean up my house.   And do it all again tomorrow. 

Know... that if you are divorcing, separated, staying in a painful marriage or facing other huge changes... change hurts.  I have friends facing certain death and lifelong illnesses.  I have friends struggling with addiction and recovery.  I have friends so buried in their lives and unhappiness they see no way out.  So I know my own pain can seem small.  Just another part of life.  But your pain is always big to you.  And tonight, it is huge for me.  Tomorrow may feel different.  It may not.  I may come to regret my decision.  But I think not. 

I still wish to split myself in two for Mike's sake.  We still interact and I find myself worried if he's cold or if he's eaten well.  I made him a quick late lunch today I was so worried he wouldn't have time to eat.  I still wish I could split myself in two for my kids' sake.  Give them one home with two parents.  But I can't give them the home we had.  Not with that tension.  I have to believe this short term pain will result in two calmer, better, more open and honest parents with two homes that are more secure than the one once was.

That is the goal at least.  That is my hope.