Parents: Separated
It is Christmas 2014 and I am alone. I made a decision that my children could spend time with their father. This decision was made in their best interest but has left me without them for Christmas, my birthday and the welcoming of the New Year. In my head I know this is the right decision for them but my heart now aches because I miss them. Somewhere in all this I know I am not the only parent feeling like this especially at this time of the year. I wasn't going to spill my guts in a blog but then whilst looking on my Facebook page someone tagged a like for a comment that I had posted on their wall back on 2/6/2014. This drew me back to what I had shared and I share it with you because up until reading that post I was feeling a little raw but this is what I had said back then…
“I believe my maturity is shown when I encourage my children
to have a relationship with their father even though we are no longer a couple.
Do I feel pain? Yes. Do I feel resentment? Sometimes. Am I jealous? Sometimes.
Are these emotions real? Yeah. Do they prevent me from allowing my children to
maintain a relationship with their father? No. I pray when the emotions
threaten to take over my rational mind and I fix my WILL to ensure my
children's needs are a priority. I breathe when my ex shows me anger I breathe
when my children need me to ease their confusions because I know that they need
BOTH parents. Separated but equal, different but same in our love for our
children”
Sometimes I think my ex thinks …. I don't really
know what he thinks so don’t want to talk about what I think he thinks. I can only talk about what is in
my heart: my children’s happiness. The reality is that they need access to both
of us. As I am the parent they live with it is up to me to lead the way. So I
have never denied him access. All that I have asked for is advanced warning so
that if we have made arrangements that we can work around these. He has had
them for a weekend and taken them out on numerous occasions. He has even turned
up on our doorstep and been allowed to come in and see them. Right
now I am not interested in some game playing. As a mother I am managing my
children’s emotional needs and these outweigh my own insecurities and emotions.
Learning to walk away from a relationship
with children doesn't come with a manual. If it did would I buy the book? I
don’t know. Everyone has their own story to tell or has an experience unique to
them. All I know is that it is a struggle. I can hear your struggle but
I can't walk in it. Like you will no doubt read my struggle but
not feel it. Times like
these make you realise that life is not always easy. Walking a particular path
may not be easy but who said it would be?
When I was not a mother I used to hear
other women talk about their baby daddies and men talk about their baby
mothers. I used to be judgmental about how they used their children as pawns to
hurt their partners and vice versa. I had theories about what I would do in
that situation if it happened to me. How brave we can be when we do not walk in
their shoes! Now years later I find myself in this place and I understand how
hard it really is to stand on higher ground when my base instincts want to kick
in and act like I have no mind! How do you think rationally when anger is
like a blanket that lies across your heart affecting everything you see, hear,
touch, think, and breathe! Can you hear the cries of your children as they try
to understand why the two people they thought loved each other no longer can
bear to be in the same room without trying to score points off each other?
I stayed longer in the relationship than I
should have. I can say that now because I am outside of it but when inside it I
was in turmoil. Sometimes when you are in the thick of a situation you can't see
the wood for the trees but as soon as you clear the trees you can see
a little clearer. On a bright day what remains within me is the fact my
children were conceived in love. That
without their father in my life I would not have these gifts that I love so
much. On a bad day this article doesn’t have the space I would need to really
let off. One day when I am no longer on this earth my children will find what I
have sent out to the universe. How do I want that to hit them? I tell you I want them to be hit with
real love. So the bad days are mine to handle and mine alone.
Don't you just hate it when people
come out of the woodwork to tell you something that if they were really bolder
they would have told you ages ago? Someone did that to me recently telling me I
should have left him a long time ago. I find it ironic that now is the
time 'people' feel they want to disclose things to me. How should I take it?
What purpose does it serve? Shrouded in secrets my mind thinks who can I trust and
who knew far more than they were willing to tell me at the time. All this has
done for me is to confirm that I was right to leave the relationship
when I did.
Yes I have regret: that we could not
fulfil the dream that I had in my mind and heart. However I walked away knowing
that I was right to leave because this was not a loving relationship where I
was allowed to flourish. This was a love that turned up at night when all the
work had been done, that walked out the door without even saying goodbye (disrespectful),
that came home and slept on the sofa and rose again before the house stirred to
disappear once more, a love that never called to ask how I might be or how our
day had gone but a love that appeared to be resentful of being with me or
answering my questions when I was excited at seeing him or asked about his day.
We were living separate lives and I was
under the illusion that this was working for us. The truth is I was lonely. I
told him I was lonely and you know what he did? He ignored me. Now how the hell
is that right when you are in a relationship? I
was fighting an internal black hole that was attempting to swallow me up. Each
conversation became a battlefield and all I wanted was to capture what we
shared in the beginning of our journey but I guess what they say is true. Some
people are with us for a reason, time or a season.
Why did I stay? I stayed because I didn't
want my children to grow up without their father. The price I paid was the cost
of being invisible and treated like I had no value. He treated me like I did
not merit being shown off to friends unless he could control how I interacted
or unless I wasn't fat. He never complimented me; never sat with me
to discuss how we would build towards the future but took pleasure in
telling me how limited I was in my thinking. Thank God I am no longer defined
by that relationship or that person he tried to create. I am no longer trying
to fit into shoes that do not fit me and never did. I am no longer defined by
his insecurities. My only
purpose now is to be a good mother to my kids and to ask the universe what is
my next move and be still until that is revealed.
Now I find myself in a new place where my
children and I are flourishing. I am rebuilding myself and whilst it sometimes
seems like a fearful place I am good. They now feel that their father is kinder
to them and listens to them. They have their own relationship with him and I am
glad for them. Whatever it becomes it will be of his own making. As for me I
deserve honesty, openness and most of all real love. I deserve someone who
loves me for who I am and not who they want me to be. I am learning to love me
just as I am. Don’t be so hard on yourself B and embrace yourself. Step into
you and not what others may want you to be. I
am multi-dimensional and after living for some time in a box it’s good to be
out of that box and into the big ole wide universe. So hello Universe what’s my next step?
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