Today I Broke

If I’m not with the kids you might find me sobbing on the kitchen floor

Today I broke.

I sat on my kitchen floor and cried until I couldn’t breathe. My nose streamed, my eyes puffed and I called out for help that would never come.

And then I began to write. It is my only way through even if I am judged for over sharing, for being too lost in the pain of my divorce and the life I am trying to hold together for my children.

My current existence is like a fine net, where everything just keeps seeping out no matter what I do, and worse, somedays, there are rents so large I think my whole world will be sucked through them but instead I block them with my body whilst my fingers scrabble to tie enough knots to keep us safe.

I read something this week that said if you could put all your troubles into a bowl, as did the rest of the world, and then took pot luck and randomly picked one out to keep, would you stay with your original troubles or would you chance it for someone else’s? It was a powerful metaphor for keeping perspective and I know I wouldn’t exchange mine, I know there are many worse troubles out there and it’s not a risk I would willingly take. And yet I cannot deny that where I am right now is unfathomably hard and I can’t even write about it (release it) yet for fear of jeopardising the fragility of now. One day I will speak my truth, one day I will tell of the cruelty but for now I can only say that it tears at my soul daily.

How a man can actively try to destroy the mother of his children is beyond my comprehension and I’m grateful for my rebelliousness and stubbornness that simply refuses to let him. But the strain of it emotionally, financially and physically is a toll that will take me a long time to recover from and we’re not even near the end yet. I cannot see the finish line. I don’t know how much longer I can keep tying these knots for.

If it weren’t for my children who have every right for their needs to be met, who have not sought or asked for this chaos imploding into their lives, if it weren’t for them, I would walk. So far. Far enough away to not find a trace of that past connection, because what I thought was a marriage, a partnership, a friendship was nothing more than a piece of theatre that I believed to be real. I was duped, betrayed, lied to and still it continues.

I recognise my part, my frantic wish to be seen, loved, valued that I created the scenery, the sound effects, the fantasy more inside my head than on any solid ground. I was a fool but now all masks are off and I’m left with the true face and it makes me shudder to play back all of those memories in this new context. To know that nearly twenty years of my life was given to something that never really existed is a bitter and painful pill to swallow.

And some days that breaks me. The tears rise and struggle to find a way to stop until, finally, the clock tells me it’s time to collect my children. Then somehow a strength appears and I cleanse my face of the black streaks of mascara, plaster a smile across my trembling lips and show up for the two most precious gifts that God has ever given me. Broken or not, I’m still their Mama and I will carry on.