Little voices on the phone

Initial response after talking to my little ones after their first day of childcare:

So this is what it is like to feel anger…no it’s deeper.  It was this feeling I was trying to avoid during my whole divorce.

It was the reason I stayed so long in a marriage that I was deeply unhappy with.

Why is it whenever someone says that they love you that it is viewed as free license to behave or act in whatever way they see fit?

I remember the first time that happened.

I was seven.

It was friendship, friends do this, I love you, and than the hurt.  But I have to act as if nothing happened to keep a secret of shameful behaviors.  And so I am silent.

I am after all being wooed by love, demands and secrets.

And sadly, that is something that I have adopted as normal. For men to have the license to say or do what they need to as long as I was deluded into thinking I was loved. In all honesty they weren’t the only sick ones.

One day in my marriage I woke up.  It was either divorce or seriously just disappearing. And by that I mean running away where no one would know me or my secrets. Avoidance is my go to, my comfort.

But you can’t avoid the pain of divorce. Or is this how my ex must have felt when his perception of an unjustified divorce moved forward and our family broken. That is something I did.

I just couldn’t stand to hear the “I love you” one more time.  I didn’t want that puppet string holding onto me any more and so I cut it.

In all things civil we agreed on a 50/50 visitation. I didn’t ask for child support or alimony. I just wanted to still be the child care provider while the ex worked.

Verbal agreements, what are they? But what are marriage vows that I walked away from? I suppose in all things equal this is Karma.

But it is painful. I know I will adjust, I know I will cope. I’ve had to do it before when my daughter died, my foster son removed from our home. You think my heart would be a bit more harden. I suppose that is the grace and curse of pregnancy hormones.

It’s the limbo that scares me. Ok, ok, it’s the lack of control.  I swear that if I hear one more I love you I will lose it because every part of my being wants to scream FUCK YOU!!!! 

Some things never change.  My ex will always view this divorce as something that caught him off guard, my infidelity, my responsibility and my punishment.

Just like being seven I believe it’s  entirely my fault. This is mine to fix or mine to bear and eventually I’ll catalog the agony in the back of my brain, at least I can pray that this avoidance takes place quickly because to feel all of this…it’s just overwhelming.