When Superman Lost His Cape

For so many days, I doubted this day would come.  $10k later, it’s finally here.  How much are you willing to pay for your happiness?  For me, $27,000 was the magic number.  Eat a bunch of debt you are only 1/2 responsible for, pay a lawyer to argue on your behalf and keep offering the same thing you offered 12 months ago until that man, accepts it because the one thing he finally realized – I am stronger than him.  I’ve learned some lessons through this process, some of them not valuable.  You’re probably thinking that every lesson has value, it isn’t so.  The lessons that leave us less trusting, lessons that strip away hope until there’s really nothing left but the rawness of life we so often try to disguise.  For so many years, I had forgotten just how painful ‘learning’ could be.  My God, learning can be painful.  But what hurts more, losing yourself in the insults shouted at you daily until you start to believe you are what they say you are.  Stupid.  Idiot.  Worthless.  Ugly.  Pig. Unlovable.  Words you wear like skin until  you cannot see anything that you were before.  And then one day you see a glimpse of who you were in the eyes of your child – and then you scrub and scrub that skin away until it’s red and bleeding.  Underneath, new skin.  We bleed, to remind us that we are not invincible.  And so I bled, I fell down, I stood back up – and I fought to remember who I was.

Today I don’t just remember who I was, I AM who I was.  I do feel a sense of failure; brief flashes of letting the expectations of society define what I ‘should’ have done.  But as quickly as they come, I let them go.  I define my path, my purpose, my worth.  One foot in front of the other.  One breath in, one breath out.  Two children who remind me every second of every day why I had no other choice.  Children who deserve all of me, not just the scattered pieces of someone that used to be whole.

And him, the one that hurt me so?  He will have his own consequences.  I will continue to ‘try’ and help his children love him while helping them never make the same mistakes their father has.  It’s a delicate balance.

1 year and 3 months later, it’s time to heal. 

When I was a little girl I learned to be a fixer.  It wasn’t by choice but by necessity.  My life was filled with broken relationships, broken promises, broken people.  At a very early age I realized that being broken meant being weak and there wasn’t a lot of gray area in between.    I wasn’t sure which came first, the weakness or the brokenness, I only knew they were inevitably intertwined.  And so now, many years and scars later, I find it an impossible task to feel whole.  I immerse myself in my work, partly due to passion, sometimes due to the fear of remaining still.  When the movement of the day slows, the voices and noises of life fade off into the distance, only the noise inside my head remains.  Thoughts swirling inside my head, gaining speed with every moment that passes until I stand on the brink of a storm no shelter could protect me from.  The weight of accountability bearing down on my shoulders, cementing in place the two things that could carry me away from imminent destruction – my feet.

And so I stand still with a weighted blanket of fear wrapped around me.  The ever unanswered question ringing in my ears, “How will I fix this?”

 

I have secrets.  Secrets that have been wrapped in lies masquerading as a truth.  A truth so well acted out, at times, I believed them myself.  Secrets become burdens, weighing so heavily on your shoulders, the only direction you can move your feet – is falling backwards.  My body is weary from the mountains I’ve climbed while carrying these secrets.  My mind has held those secrets hostage for so long, they have become more of a friend than a foe.  Why tell my secrets now?  Maybe because I feel like I’m living a double life.  One life that appeals to those that will surely judge me, one life that finally sets me free.

My secrets, emptiness, sadness, anger, failure – are mine and mine alone.  Although they came to existence from the collateral damage of a bad relationship, their longevity has endured because of my own choices.  Choices I thought I made for my children.  For their protection.  To keep them as ‘normal’ as I thought they needed to be.  Normal in the eyes looking upon them.  Normal in what a society deems acceptable.  A normal family.  Two normal parents.  Normal, normal , normal.  Growing up a child of divorce, I knew all too well the labels affixed once the world finds out your parents couldn’t manage to keep their relationship together.  From the failure of that marriage forward a child becomes, ‘a child of a broken home’.  Blame is placed no matter the circumstances surrounding that failure.  No one really wants to know the why – or at least not know it well enough that they can stop placing blame.  And so I keep secrets.  Choosing to sacrifice my own happiness to protect the happiness of my kids.  I believed with all that was in me I was making the right choice.  All the while never realizing that the secrets would only grow the more sadness I felt, the angrier I got, the more I failed at pretending to be, normal.  I’ve always thought of myself as strong.  Strong enough to  let the name calling, “Stupid, ignorant, pig,” bounce off of me.  Strong enough to be ok with a definition of love that didn’t match my own.  Strong enough to never hear the words “I’m sorry,” without being followed by “but it’s your fault.”  I guess I never realized that sometimes those things can damage you, a tick burrowing through your skin until eventually, it infects your bloodstream leaving you with a weakness no strength could overcome.  Everything inside of you becomes – collateral damage.  Your thoughts.  Your hopes and aspirations.  Your self esteem.  And outside of you, the collateral damage becomes your children.

Life has a way of handing out wake up calls – if you are paying attention.  A child calling their sibling a name, a name you were called just days before.   Children always blaming and never owning their own actions.  And so I chose – to be brave.  To make a choice that would surely deem my kids, ‘children from a broken home’.   I chose between letting my children be labeled OR helping my children grow into compassionate, accountable human beings. 

I made a choice to let my children see, that I am human.  That I fail as often as I succeed.  That I feel pain just as deeply as I feel joy.  That staying in a relationship with a person that cannot give you what you deserve, is not really a choice at all.   I’m teaching them that normal is a label created by those who fear what is different.    I’m teaching myself that being damaged doesn’t mean being broken.  Every day I am learning to be ok with being human.