Who am I now?
When you go through a divorce that came about because of infidelity, there are moments that you doubt who you are as a woman. In 2015 I went through it. The question of whether I was woman enough. Soft enough. Pretty enough. Sexy enough. Nurturing enough. Kind enough. Was I too smart? Did my success threaten his masculinity? Did I have to speak my mind so damn much?
A few years ago, one of my best friends asked me in a joke how my ex and I ever got together. He saw us as too different for each other. I was way too academic and well behaved. He was not. I laughed it off, but in the back of my mind I asked myself the same question. How did I end up with some one like this?
I have no idea. Because I made that choice with my 20 year old sense and I sustained that choice daily with a misunderstanding of who I was, what love was, and what I really needed from a man. At that time in my life, I ran from anything that seemed too strong. So I ended up with a man who was weak enough to really let me run the show. How I despised him for his lack of leadership and for his refusal to make decisions that would positively affect our family’s future. Everything we had came from my vision. It was exhausting. Why did I run so much from strength? Because I had never seen a man who knew what to do with his power. So I equated power with abuse. I wanted no part in anything like that. For me, I needed a life where I could have a voice. I could speak. I would not be invisible.
I didn’t realize that that was so relative. It didn’t matter if I could speak and no one listened. Or if I wasn’t invisible but alone. And so I became trapped in a marriage where I worked overtime to love it to life. But you can’t make something wrong right. You cannot make someone love you when they loathe you for not fixing their issues. You cannot run from the pain of your daddy issues into the arms of a man expecting him to make you whole. That is not real. So it was embarrassing to get to the point where I admitted that this mess needed to end. And not only did he not love me, but it felt like he hated me. And the pain of rejection and the new label of single mother stung me to the innermost parts of my core. Who am I? Who is he to treat me this way? Am I really this bad? Is that side chick so much of a woman? How many panic attacks before I lose this mind I have here? And will my pride ever make it to the other side?
I had to come to terms with myself and realize that there were some deep rooted issues that had nothing to do with the man I married. And while I loved him for what I understood love to be at the time, love in its full essence, love as bold and forgiving and honest and real was something foreign to me. The possibility of never seeing or experiencing it fed my depression like a hungry dog to a rare piece of meat.
Who am I now? The upbeat person everyone sees? Am I really this upbeat or is this a façade? Where is this light? What is my motivation? If I am not someone someone else loves then who am I? What a hard, ongoing interrogation. I did not have the answers. So that must be the reasons for these 3 babies. For if I were not forced to get out of bed to feed, bathe and provide for them, I suppose I would have let myself just die. Rejected, alone and unimportant. But they kept calling my name. They needed me. They said they loved me. They asked me for juice and help with homework. They forced me to have a routine, and to eat and to take my vitamins. They made me bathe and put on my makeup because I had to go to work for them. And, even though I was stumbling in the dark, they were the reason I decided to get back up.
I know that being a single momma is hard. And whatever your story, or journey to this place, please know that it is ok to be human. It is ok to have made a mess of things. It is ok to be scared as I once was. Know also that you are not alone. You will not remain in that sunken place. You will rise. One day at a time, single momma. One day at a time.