I am not what you would call a ‘glass half full’ kind of girl and never have been. I don’t make lemonade when life hands me lemons; I make a cocktail with a twist, instead. So given that, you might expect that at times when the caca hits the fan, I might be prone to wallowing in the mire. My husband of almost 14 years announcing that he was in love with someone else and wanted out of our marriage and out of my life was bad enough. That he was also leaving our four year old daughter in the process was, to me, despicable. These facts alone would be good reasons to land in some pretty thick mire and wallow around for a while. But I haven’t.
Upon hearing the news, an acquaintance of mine gave me their two cents: that a divorce from one’s spouse was the same as the death of a spouse. I haven’t experienced the latter, so I really couldn’t say for sure, except that I feel that anyone who has loved and lost because of death would not agree. That same person told me that I needed to allow myself to grieve, allow myself time to process the loss of the life I once knew.
So based on these things, I initially assumed that my impending divorce would send me through the five stages of grief, with a long pause on the anger level. Except, a few months in, I realized that I don’t have time for five stages, let alone one stage. I have a four year old daughter who has no idea what is about to happen to her life and I don’t have the heart to tell her. Grief for myself seems superfluous. I have my moments of rage and depression, particularly when I think about how much she is losing and how she will react one day when she understands fully what happened, but like the stink of a passing fart, these angry moments move on and I am more or less back to normal.
I feel like taking the time to grieve a life that is no more is just a waste of my time and it gives HIM more of me. I’m not willing to give him any more of me.
I can hear you now! You’re saying: “But if you don’t deal with it and recover, how will you be there for your daughter?” Easy. I will be there for my daughter by BEING THERE FOR MY DAUGHTER.
Divorce is not like death. There is no outside factor, like illness or an accident, that I can blame to no avail for the destruction of our family. I place the blame squarely where it belongs, and while I concede that there may have been aspects to my being that might have contributed to this outcome, I can’t for anything forgive someone who would abandon their little girl on purpose when there are good men and women out there who had to leave theirs, through no fault of their own. Okay, so I’m a little angry, but really more for her than for me. She is losing her family, the life she has known, her home, her school, her friends and her father. In one fell swoop. And there is not a thing I can do about it except move on and show her the good side.
In other words, I need to make some lemonade!
I have played up that moving in with my mother means a cool house, a great porch for playing on, an awesome school with the BEST playground ever… From her point of view, these are meaningful and important. Her silver linings, at least for now, if not forever.
She will adapt and survive because I will be there for her. What’s the silver lining for me? That’s easy: my daughter. I have the greatest gift anyone can have: I have my baby girl. With her comes the immense responsibility of raising her, feeding her, clothing her, loving her and educating her so that she will one day go out in to the world on her own two tiny, little feet! That’s an awesome task and I am at times overwhelmed at the prospect of going at it alone. But I am also excited by the possibilities.
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jojo says
You are such an awesome mom….. your child is SO lucky to be able to count on you… she will know this later on.