Tucked Away

Away, tucked away in layers of cotton and breath.
I so hurriedly herded and encouraged and needed you there.
I held your half grown self firmly against me, absorbed your heat, your smell, your relentless adoration.

My heart pricked with the shame of my shortcomings.

Out from her mouth spilled the verbal commitment of her heart to me, her appreciation of her existence.  And I no longer wanted to give her to the night.
I needed her to know how sorry I am for showing up to this task with a nearly empty tank.
It's not ok.
I should be able to do it anyway.
I wanted to wail at her feet and beg for the day back- to not yell, to not speak harshly, to hold hands, to be still and listen, to be on the floor and catch all the moments that cannot be retrieved in these mourning hours of the night.

I wanted to promise that by tomorrow I will have it figured out.
I will be outfitted, somehow overnight, with the gear I need to be that mom. 
Maybe I just don't have the correct candle scent warming and filling my nostrils,
maybe the motivational quote on my computer screen isn't potent enough,
maybe the GMOs in my snacks are impacting my brain function.
Whatever it is, I wanted to promise her to have it solved and resolved by 8am tomorrow.

Of course I don't actually share any of this. 
Look at her.
She sees only perfection in me.
Why would I trouble her world when all of this only exists in mine.

She falls from my grip like a felled tree, vibrating the bed frame, sending the creatures surrounding her into the air, collapsing the pillow up around her face.

It's Almost Here Folks!!

I've been through enough inner work to know that when I am feeling judged it is really just me judging myself.  And let's say that I'm wrong, that someone out there really is judging me, well shame on them.  They can go fly a kite (or some such thing).  But here I am feeling the need to justify, or explain some things away.  Really, also, to dump out this Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout-sized pile of feelings onto a blank computer screen.

I do my best to disappear on the weekends.  Emotionally and physically. I want to vacate my week life, set it down and come back in 48 hours.  I wouldn't say single moms are heroes (it's not a dig, I just am not sure that's the right word for it), and I am hardly that 'single mom' anyone ever talks about, but it's f*cking hard and draining to sustain two rambunctious, thriving, needing people through a week without that other person struggling right along side me.  And not just any other 'one'.  The one who made them also.  The actual only other person who can relate to them in the way I can, who can share a sideways glance with me that holds an entire story that we can giggle about without words passing.
And so I go.  I am not around for hanging out.  I am not around for work.  I am not around to experience any parts of my weekday life.  I really, really need to go away.  I need to check out.  It feels imperative to my survival.

And no, I won't be there with my kids at the weekend birthday parties.  He will.  I won't show up for those few hours to be there.  I want to.  I love the community, the family and love that is being with my tribe.  But then I am back in my week.  And my kids are too.  If you knew the heartbreak that happens for my babies when I pop in for a moment of their weekend, you wouldn't question it.  It sends them into a tailspin.  Maybe not right away, or maybe in that moment.  They aren't ready to deal with that.  I am not going to require them to.  They are still too raw.  So am I.

And so I'm not there.

And guess what else?!  Thursday I'm a free woman!!  Divorced!  Have I told how wrecked I am?  How vulnerable, exposed and generally terrified I feel?  I am coming up on a solid week of hovering on a meltdown.  I can't see old baby photos without crying.  I can't see or talk to Ethan without crying.  I can't listen to someone gripe about their husband without crying.  I can't listen to half the music on the radio without crying.  The way that electric guitar hovered on that note a moment longer- crying.  I am afraid if I really give in to the crying that is waiting for me, I'll be sucked into a deep pit and never be seen again.

You know what else is neat?  Some horrid person thinks I should be over it.  She thinks I am being dramatic and invasive.  As if my own personal feelings of failure plus the impending doom I feel is waiting for my children as they grow in a broken home isn't plenty on it's own- no I want to stick myself in the midst of the relationship that f*cks with my brain the most.  What a hilarious assumption.  An entire third of my life was committed to this man.  We created new human beings together with our bodies.  We cried and loved and laughed and struggled and were in awe together.

How sad for her that she hasn't had that experience.  Otherwise she wouldn't accuse me of being a horrible person for not being 'over it'.

For better or for WORSE

So there you are, all decked out in a heavy, gorgeous white dress with makeup perfected and hair that

has been heated, molded, pinned and threatened so as to make it just-so.  You're excited.  The thumping in your chest is fast and full.  This is awesome.  He is awesome.  His smile is elusive and gorgeous and he looks like a freaking model in that suit.  Hot damn- that man is about to be your husband!  Won't your babies be gorgeous?  Won't forever be a breeze if it's with that guy?

At some point you agree that, yes, whether you are sleeping between bedposts made of gold or shivering cold huddled in the nook of grocery store and it's newspaper stand- yes, you will stay together.  You agree that in the peaks of fitness and the depths of addiction, you will stay true.  And finally, the traditional summary, "for better or for worse" presents itself and you agree, but of course.  A most definite hearty and enthusiastic confirmation that this union is the shit.  You feel it powerfully, you judge those who have come before you and you know that you will not be like them.  No, this is a love unlike the rest.

It takes time.  It's always a disappointing and comforting lesson to be reminded that we are not different from each other.  We are all the same.  Our experiences are vast and immeasurably varied, and the bottom line is always that we are, at the core, all the same humans.  There are plenty of ways to convince yourself that you are special and nothing like so-and-so, it's the way we behave on the outside that convinces ourselves of these dividers.  It's the inside that is always, always the same.

I traveled forward into marriage on the high of the "better".  Everything was freaking awesome!  I relish big life changes, it excites me and motivates me.  In that moment you can only imagine what "worse" represents.  I didn't spend a lot of time considering it.  In a vague way it meant to me being annoyed or disappointed.  A feeling that may last a day or two but wouldn't permeate our bond.  I could handle being annoyed and even disappointed.  So that handled that.  No biggie.

In a week, that heavy dress will have been stuffed in a box, dirt still having it's way with the hem, for nine years.  Compared to some, we are still babies in this venture, but this year I feel like I am one hundred years in and am beat up, dirty and dragging small people through a dessert mirage- yes kids, this is real!  This is wonderful!  There is beautiful, clean water in abundance!  This is the year our relationship was KO'd, this is the "worse".

I know it's going to be annoying that I don't spell out the details, but 1. it's not really fair to the man and, 2. I really just need to pour out my emotions on 'paper'.  Y'all: the "worse" is worse than you think you knew in those wistful moments.   For me it looked like days of sobbing with bits of being normal for the small ones.  It looked like every blood cell in my body vibrating with rage and threatening to come out in ways that would have gotten me arrested.  This is not me.  But it was.  I kicked the sofa.  I powered it with the heel of my foot.  I screamed with my whole into a pillow, over and over and over.  I shook all the time.  I cursed and wept in all kid-less moments.  At some point I realized that this whole experience could end.  Like really end.

That end had all kinds of ugly, complicated and heartbreaking new beginnings.  Getting a divorce was never an option for me, yet I wasn't able to see continuing on either.  I am not a patient person, I am a hypocrite in my need for others to make decisions now but insisting on time and space to make them myself.  I became a person who was waiting and surviving the days.  I knew it was time that we needed.  This grand canyon-esque fracture needed time.  Fucking time.

I can count on my family to be wise.  Loving, supportive and wise.  And so it was, this piece of advice that gave me the freedom to have all of the feelings and craziness I was going through, this piece of advice that made the valley (which feels more like a crevasse) that we are experiencing ok.

"Sometimes you just have to be committed to the commitment."

And WOOOSH, I was freed from all the guilt of hating him and despising him and the impossibleness of being near him.  I could let go of my commitment to him- the person, for now, and be committed to that commitment.  Words.  A promise.  I could hang onto that for dear life, squeeze it close and it could be the eye in the center of this overwhelming hurricane of breakdown.  And it's working.  It's only three short months later and we are not healed.  We have a rough sketch of who we want to be now.

Freaking time.