And Here You Are The Best Of Us

 What do you wear to tell them that everything is changing? What color goes best with heartbreak? What textures are the softest to wipe their tears with?

What do you do in the hours before? Act like everything is normal? Make sure the chores are done? Hold them in case they don’t want your arms when they know? Do something fun? Do nothing at all?

Will they even be heartbroken? Will there be sighs of relief? Will it be anger and not sadness that follows this broken news? 

This is at least the seventh time in 9 weeks that I have asked myself these questions. Today is supposed to be THE DAY. I am frozen, numb, panicked, hot, pained… all at once. 

This is always the most dangerous moment. The day when I wonder and question and have to remind myself all the reasons why. I have to coach myself how to do it without causing any more harm than is inevitable. I have to hope I’m not the only one doing that, and accept that I may, yet again, have to clean up someone else’s mess in the aftermath. 

I still don’t want this. I never WANTED this. No one gets married and raises four babies wanting to someday look those babies in the eye and tell them that mistakes were made and consequences are incoming. No one wants to tell their kids that everything is about to change and you don’t know exactly how you’ll make it to the next normal or even what that normal will be. No one walks down an aisle hoping that some day they’ll divide assets.

I don’t want this, but I do need it. I can’t be another woman in a long line who made themselves smaller, made themselves quiet, made themselves irrelevant. I can’t be another mother who set another shit example for what you should accept as good enough. I won’t be.

I’m not strong. I am not doing a great job. I am weak and trembling and barely skating by. I am terrified of what comes next. All the questions, many that I can’t answer because I still have to protect a man who hurt me over and over because of who he is to them. I want to shield them, and I can’t. Someday they will know most of the things. I have to hope that when someday comes they still are open to hearing the truth and haven’t simply hardened themselves and decided that because I am the one who said it had to stop that I am the villain. I don’t want any villains. I just want peace. I hope he finds peace too.

I feel the same as I did when graduation was looming and I had no real plans and knew the deep inadequacy of my support system. I am terrified of failing them. I’m scared that he is right and that I can’t survive on my own. But I’ve done hard things before, I can do it again. 

I’ve never longed for disassociation so much. I am Cristina Yang begging to be sedated. I don’t want these core memories I’m about to make. Not for me, not for them.

And I still can’t figure out what the hell to wear for this or why I feel like that matters.