Days in the Sun

There will be a few entries to this journal that will stay with me when Lilah turns 18 and I print it out for her, conversations with myself, like phone calls to the imaginary mother I have in my head. The imaginary woman I always ran to when everything was just too much, who talked me down and gave me love. Now, I know that it was just Older Me, comforting Younger Me, telling me it would get better, telling me I was strong enough, fitting the shards back together every time my heart broke, telling me to snap out of it and grit my teeth, to disassociate, to get through the hurt, surgically removing the parasites from my life when I wasn't strong enough to do it myself. I was the mother I always wanted, and the mother I resolved to be for my child. Incidentally, it was always that Mom voice who would pry my fingers away from some unhealthy thing I was holding on to and afraid to lose. Like all good mothers, she's never wrong. This will be one of those entries that is not for Lilah. This is one of those conversations with myself I need to have. Not because it's private. I don't really care who knows it. Shame is something I gave up in 2017.

"There is no justice in the world." That is one of the things my Mom voice keeps telling me. Don't waste your energy on anger. Life is exhausting enough on its own. You lose sleep while the people you're angry at slumber away. On the other hand, and seemingly contradictory, I hear...

"Don't feel shame". Other people's hangups are not your problem. Go with your gut. Your initial response is rarely wrong. It's been honed through years of Fight or Flight. Trust your instincts. If your initial feeling is joy, don't let others take it. If your initial feeling is trepidation, don't blindly trust whatever is happening. 

"You're a queen." This was a hard one. The voice told me my whole life that I was stronger than I felt, and had to push through all the hurt and emerge intact, because there was a life on the other side of the nightmare that was worth living, a little kingdom to rule, a little royal to bring up strong and healthy. "Don't concern yourself with the opinions of the rabble." Ignore the small minds. They don't matter. I listened, and trusted, and pushed through until I emerged in a sunny meadow, like Rapunzel coming down from her Tower. And just like Rapunzel, I fought the urge to immediately go back for so many reasons. The people I'd hurt. The fear of the unknown. Not being strong enough to succeed outside those walls. The voice told me to push through. I was worthy. I deserved my days in the sun. It's still a daily, sometimes hourly battle. The voice told me I had to start rejecting behavior that was beneath my dignity. Call out misogyny where I see it. Be willing to throw down over sexual harassment. "There is absolutely no reason you should accept mistreatment." I made a promise to myself to be fearless in rejecting it. 

Unfortunately, finally learning to heed my inner Mom voice was a major factor in my marriage's ultimate demise. It's no secret the Lilah-related reasons I left. It's been harder to vocalize the reasons I left that were about me. Things that made me unsettled in 2008 were raging like wildfires in 2015. The more distance I have, the more clearly I see what went wrong. I definitely had a role to play. I enabled. I coddled. I micro-managed. I parented an adult. I accepted. I stayed silent. I feared loss so I did nothing. I treated symptoms, rather than the disease. My approach to the issues in our relationship was like going to Urgent Care for Stage 4 cancer. Ineffective and ultimately deadly. I've been working hard on identifying and correcting those unhealthy patterns in myself. One of the most influential people in getting me to trust and heed my inner Mom voice through all of this has been Ben. Not once has he tried to step in and solve a problem on my behalf. Instead, he's encouraged me to feel the full spectrum of my emotions and held me through the pain of it, even when I thought it would break me (it hasn't yet). If it got to be too much and I'd check out of the pain to cope, he gave me the space to breathe, to come back to it when I could handle it, to try again. 

There are some hurts that have seemed too big to face. I'd been handling the divorce like a medical procedure. Sterile. Successive. Cauterize. Anesthetize. Suture. There were very few days of breakthrough pain. The day last winter when I filed paperwork, I sat sobbing in the courthouse parking lot, listening to "She Used to be Mine" by Sara Barreilles. I cried for the girl who bit holes in her cheeks and cut gashes in her arms with sharp rocks to get through the nightmare that was childhood because she believed she'd get a happy life Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Instead, there was just a woman broken into piece, and a little girl in pain, and a man who was drowning in his own sickness and blind to anything else.

"It's not what I asked for
Sometimes life just slips in through a back door
And carves out a person and makes you believe it's all true
And now I've got you
And you're not what I asked for
If I'm honest, I know I would give it all back
For a chance to start over and rewrite an ending or two
For the girl that I knew

Who'll be reckless, just enough
Who'll get hurt, but who learns how to toughen up
When she's bruised and gets used by a man who can't love
And then she'll get stuck
And be scared of the life that's inside her
Growing stronger each day 'til it finally reminds her
To fight just a little, to bring back the fire in her eyes
That's been gone, but used to be mine."

I resolved in that parking lot to light a match and guard it with my life. Not just for Lilah, but for me. I needed my fire back, and I wasn't putting it out for anyone. And the fire grew. The hurts that were too big to face stared back at me from the flames, and I could acknowledge them, feel them, allow them to be without them consuming me. 

To the man I'd promised to love forever, how could you? I stayed through the unimaginable. You left our newborn to cry in her crib alone, throwing things and breaking things, rather than address your anger and anxiety. You were short tempered and harsh with her until she was so fragile she'd burst into tears if anyone gently corrected her. Toward the end you were so explosive that you shoved or grabbed her, not even realizing you were doing it. You pushed me off on other people if I wanted your attention, telling me to get it elsewhere, because you couldn't deal. I always came to you first if I wanted to go to a movie, go to dinner, go anywhere. If it didn't interest you, you couldn't be bothered. If I brought up that I wanted to spend time with you, you told me I had the best of both worlds, being able to do what I wanted but not have you be forced to do something you didn't want to do. You exploded in anger and threatened violence. In the end, you told me you were relieved I finally figured out we should separate. And after we did, my god. You were sexually and physically aggressive. You tried to tell me how to sit and how to dress in my own home, because you couldn't control yourself. You called me a fucking bitch within earshot of our daughter. You didn't pay a cent to keep a roof over your child's head, feed or clothe her, until there was a court order forcing you to. You asked me if I knew any single girls, for dating advice, all the while neglecting the love of the one little girl who actually mattered. You didn't notice when she was covered in bug bites. You told her you'd go on a field trip and she was overjoyed, only to tell her the day before that you'd let it slip your mind, and you'll go next time. I spent hours that night holding her while she cried and said she didn't even want to go to the zoo anymore. Never once have I told our child what I think of you. I've stroked her hair and let her feel her feelings, gritting my teeth in silence. She sits in front of the TV with you after school, happily reporting how many episodes of mindless shows she got to watch. I spend my evenings being the militant parent, an endless cycle of homework, violin, dinner, bath, bed. On your weekends with her, you sit around or go to your family's house. She asks to go to the zoo, the park, see her friends. You do nothing. You won't go to school events because they make you uncomfortable. You didn't go to curriculum night, or her Meet the Teacher night. You are a constant disappointment to her and her solo time with you consists of chicken fingers and TV. I never say a bad word about you while that child is present in the house. But you should be ashamed of yourself for not being able to emerge from your cloud of disillusioned self pity and anger to care for your only child. It's rough all over, buddy, and there was no one on standby to parent for me while I processed my feelings. You didn't get up with her when she was up in the middle of the night for months on end with separation anxiety, afraid I'd leave. You're not there when she's sick. You don't go to doctor visits with her. I have teen babysitters who take more care with her than you do. You call me a bitch, you live like you're trying to send yourself to an early grave, yet you have the audacity to ask me for medical and dating advice?

To the people who were my family, I'm astonished at your response. I kept so much of it from you because I thought I should be enough to handle it. But now you see it all. And still, I can't believe the choices you continue to make. You've supported him emotionally, financially. You're trying to snuggle him back to health. Let me just tell you, that approach will get you nowhere. I never expected you to choose me over him, but I did not expect a shunning. I didn't expect you to leave me rudderless and in pain, barely able to drag myself out of bed from the sadness, wearing clothes with holes in them I couldn't afford to replace, crying because I could see Lilah needs new shoes and pants because she'd grown and having to wait until another paycheck because I couldn't afford them this month. Lots of soup and PB&J. Worrying about the peanut butter ban at school in the Fall because turkey and cheese sandwiches weren't in my price range at the time. Me telling you how your family member is treating me and being told "Well, he's hurting." So was I, but I was not abusing him. When I made the only call I could, which was to move in with Ben and share expenses while I sold my house, you felt betrayed, although you offered no alternatives. When this man who has helped love and support Lilah while her father drinks away his existence asked us to stay with him forever and I said yes, I felt your response palpably. I lost my real parents and siblings a long time ago. I never expected to lose the people who looked me in the eye and told me I'd always be family, no matter what. Who told me I'd always be a daughter, a sister, no matter what my relationship status was. Who stopped speaking to me when things went awry. And why? Because I hit him? Berated him? Threatened him? Called him names in front of our daughter? No. Because I played the only card I had left, and still lost everything. Because the only way I could swim out was to stop trying to save someone who was insistent on drowning. Because I took a few tentative steps towards happiness and health. I'm not telling you how to feel. You do you. But the fact you're upset with me and act like I'm the one who's done the unthinkable, committed the unforgivable, just because I left, it tells me a lot about your character. Losing you won't break me. I've lost others more dear to me. It hurts like a motherfucker though. And you knew better.

Lilah tells me everything in her heart, like how listening to Adele reminds her of her daddy. "Hello" reminds her of how he broke my heart. "Make You Feel My Love" reminds her of how she wishes her daddy knew that's how she felt about him. She was watching Frozen and when Elsa thawed Anna and Olaf said "An act of true love can thaw a frozen heart," she walked over to Ben and said "Like you did for Mama." I'm trying to do for her what Ben does for me. Hold her while she feels her feelings and trust that she'll come out on the other side, intact, whole, and healthy, with closure and peace. 

And now, here I am. On the brink of a totally different life. Most days, the Mom voice is quiet and proud. When I do hear it, I heed it immediately and don't doubt it for a second, no matter the fallout. It got me this far. I don't live for the relief I feel when the person next to me finally falls asleep. I don't have to put myself between him and my child, taking whatever verbal anger was directed at her and absorbing it. Our house is the little kingdom I was born to rule. Every day I'm treated like the queen of his life, and I'm not willing to accept anything less at this point. I have no need to seek attention anywhere else because if I have a need in our relationship, he meets it. If a day comes that I'm berated, mistreated, called names in front of our friends, talked down to, that will be the day I say goodbye. Until then, I'll spend my days in the sun. The occasional shadowy cloud blocks it out, but it's usually just a ghost of my own deep feelings of unworthiness in finally living the life I always wanted, or it's someone else trying to project their own unhappiness into the sky over me like a Morsmordre spell to conjure the Dark Mark. Now I can live, and love, and sing, and thrive. 

"Oh I could sing

Of the pain those dark days bring

The spell we're under

Still, it's the wonder of us I sing of tonight.

Days in the sun

We must believe as lovers do

That days in the sun

Will come shining through."

Dear Lilah,

I'm sitting by myself on the eve of your 8th birthday. Already crying. Go figure.

So much has happened this year, my sweet love. To you. To us. The biggest one being the shift in your family. Fault lines that started as hairline fractures widened to chasms this year. I ache every day hoping one day you understand. You'll never know how much it hurt me and Daddy to make the choices we made this year. I do hope you understand how hard we tried. This time last year we were prepping you for your MRI. We were tentative and rocky from the hard winter we had gone through, and we tried so hard to keep you from seeing what was happening, what we were trying to keep from happening. I remember telling your dad while you were sedated that no matter what had happened with us, I was glad I had him there with me. That I couldn't imagine sharing that scary moment in parenting with anyone else. That is still true. There will always be moments that I can only ever share with Daddy.

Family looks different this year. I know. I feel it too, and it hurts me. When you get out of bed a thousand times a night, just making sure I'm still home. When you cry at night for Daddy. When you're upset if I leave for a meeting. When you yell at him and are so angry because he isn't home anymore, even though it was me who asked him to leave. I feel you, little girl, and I'm so sorry you're hurting. You have grown so much this year. Not just your body, but your spirit grew too. A year ago, if there was a slight change in your routine you would dissolve. Now you're learning to handle transition with grace. Your insight on the world teaches me new things all the time. Your empathy and compassion grow every day. Your strong sense of justice and loathing for anything unfair, sneaky, or cowardly inspire me. There were days this winter when I struggled to get out of bed. Days I cried and you stroked my hair. Days we cried together. I'm sorry you had to go through this but I never could have done it without you. You're the reason I get out of bed. The reason I'm strong. The reason I live without bitterness or regret. The reason your dad is working hard to be healthy and happy. It's all you, babe. You make us so much better. I know parents say "I gave you life", but you gave me mine. Any good there is in me I see reflected out of your blue eyes and I can't regret a single second of my life that brought me to you.

8 years ago tonight I was napping on the couch. Uncomfortable. Irritable. Impatient. Daddy was on his computer. You'd been in there too long and I wanted you out of me. It wasn't until the next morning that all the pain was a foggy memory and the last 294 days were a speck on the horizon, because I had you in my arms, looking at me with purple blueberry eyes. Your skin on my skin sparked magic between us, little one. I hurt when you hurt. I feel joy when you do. We became connected at the very heart of me, even though the cord that connected your body to mine was cut at that moment.

There is no guidebook, Lilah Rose. I don't have a mother to call and ask if I'm doing this right. I don't have a grandma fussing over you catching a chill or telling me how things were when she was raising her kids while I roll my eyes. I'm winging it every step of the way, and all I have is my intuition. I'm not always right. I'm so far from perfect. But everything I do is for you. I'd fight whoever I had to for you, serve on committees I hate to make your education better. I'd march through the city streets to show you no one can take away your power. I'd go to countless hours of specialist visits and IEP meetings to make sure the world understands how you learn, instead of them asking you to learn like everyone else. And when it came down to it, I'd burn down the life we built for you, if I thought it was the only way to save your relationship with your dad. I can't say I'd do it without a second thought. Because I have them. Every day. And oh, so much guilt and fear. But you're so strong, little bird. And so brave. You're amazing. And tomorrow, you're 8. It's the greatest honor of my life to be yours.

With all my love,
Mama