Month Three of Being Separated

It’s been officially three months since my spouse and I separated. I still congratulate myself for having the strength to leave. I have made it through some of my darkest days during these past three months. 

There have been times that I cried in the shower while my two children were asleep in the hotel bed we shared. There were nights I felt so codependent on my spouse that I would call him just to hear his voice and go into a rage over how I felt so broken. 

I even found myself texting him the first month, texting him just to go off. The efforts that I put into trying to get my point across went vain. He could have cared less, and I was yet again trying to re-enroll in his damn circus. 

I backed away from the clown shit! I turned in my costume and the damn face paint. After losing myself in my marriage and motherhood, I decided to find myself again. Healing for me has included eliminating to evolve. I just had to learn to stop trying to force him to have a relationship with his children.

Communicating works both ways. To effectively co-parent/parallel parent, then healthy communication is vital. I’m no longer questioning what I could have done differently to still be union. I no longer imagine Eli and Alina resenting me for leaving their father one day. I am standing in my power and regaining my independence. 

I was still an adolescent when I was married. I was just one year shy of being out of high school. I found myself in my marriage while busting my ass to work a part-time job to help my spouse pay bills. I forgive my younger self for doing what I did in survival mode. I remember being homeless and sleeping out of my children’s father’s car in a retail strip parking lot. 

I remember being scared for my life while living out of a motel with him after his mother put us both out. I still vividly recall the fist pounds outside the motel room door we shared while working. 

A prostitute outside my door was pleading with me to open the door because someone was after her. I was scared for my life. She tried to slide a small pack of what looked like cocaine underneath my door, and I anxiously pushed it back while keeping my back up against the door. 

I never told him what I went through while he was at work at the motel. I never told him what I heard through the paper-thin walls. All the moans over the sound of the televisions were playing. The cussing from couples or prostitutes, or the drug-dealing I would see from peeping from the windows at odd times. 

I been through so much and kept a tight lip about it. I fought a man off me who knew that I used to walk about two miles to work on my way home one afternoon from my job working at the gas station. The man damn near ripped my shirt off me to get me in his back seat. I was young and naïve, but I damn sure knew that the man I was married to wasn’t going to do not a damn thing about it. 

Throughout the entire marriage, I was in survival mode. I no longer want my children to see me being torn down emotionally by life. I don’t mind my children seeing me cry. I just want my children also to experience me being genuinely happy as they should. I have learned during this third month that there comes no guilt in moving forward for the better.