There are some thoughts I can’t keep inside my head. I literally feel like I will burst if I don’t tell someone. I have a history of telling too many people too many things. The challenge is to find a balance between these two states.
Tonight I took Truman to his first cub scout meeting. He was nervous and being pessimistic. I get frustrated when my kids give up without trying. I occasionally realize they do this because they are living by my example. We were lost and arrive at the meeting late. Truman’s attitude was slowly changing after we talked about Ethan’s first cub scout meeting. I can understand where he is coming from: if Ethan can survive then surely he, as the younger brother, can also. As the leader was teaching the cub scout laws and oath, I reflected on when Ethan was memorizing these exact pillars of the club. My heart dropped out of my chest into my stomach. The memories were of me telling David what Ethan and I had time to work on and what I needed David to accomplish while I was unavailable.
I realized in that memory, as the waterfall of similar shots from our past began to crash in my head, that David and I lived seperately for a long time before we moved into seperate houses. In fact, many memories, dare I say most, of the time we were married is of us being apart. It started out as me attending college and working part time as he worked to support us. Then quickly it became me working weekend nights and him traveling for a job that “fell into our laps.” He was also taking classes to finish his degree. While this arrangement was great for the kids because they were barely ever at a babysitter’s, we had to work to find time to be together. It ate away at our young relationship like a cancer.
The climax was our first trip to Hawaii. We actually had time to relax together. I can remember feeling a little like being on a first date when we dressed up to go to the luau. We decided to buy our ‘big’ house on that trip. We were in the middle of Ethan’s rhythmic fevers of over 104 for months. But it was us against the world. The next memory I have of us making time to be together is my 30th birthday. His brother had a party bus that we took out with friends. I was sick earlier in the day–literally throwing up. But I forced myself to get up and enjoy it and I did. He asked me for a divorce when I was almost 33. I have trouble extracting any memories from that time that we were together without stress, sadness and silence.
So many day to day memories are of me alone with the kids or me away from Dave and the kids thinking about them. I realized that my life has not changed much since then except I’m not supposed to love David anymore. So many things have happened–hurtful words and actions, mistrust, anger and sadness–that to think we could or should be together is not realistic and bordering on delusional. We chose a lifestyle. We unknowingly agreed to live seperately but still be connected by the love of and for our children. I am confident there are people in our lives that saw it coming. But it took my six year old standing like a soldier in that church with his two fingers raised, trying to repeat those vows, for me to realize it. Now I know. Now I will make sure those four souls know their parents loved each other a one point and that we love(d) them always. We have become strangers to each other, but have never lost the passion of being their parents. It’s not the fairy tale ending. But it’s the ending we chose.
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