This is my "Why"

I feel a sudden jolt, then a searing hot pain to my head. For a moment, I am frozen but I hear myself crying. My mother screams at me to get up. I stumbled across the kitchen floor. I felt a warm drip running down the left side of my face. Drip. Drip. Drip. I see my blood on the floor. My mother is by side at the kitchen sink but I don’t remember how she got there. I stare at the blood on the floor as she runs water at the sink, grabs towels, fussing to get everything cleaned up, she’s just fussing. She presses something to my head, telling me to hold still. Her voice is angry.

I lay in my mother’s lap. We sit on the floor of my room, the cold wood underneath me and her hands, her “medicine hands”, stroke my back. Stroke my hair. Her hands are worn with work, pulling things apart, putting things together, all day long, she sews other people’s fancy furnishings and her hands know the tales. At home, they do the work of both mother and father. As her hands comfort me, she says, “it’s a good thing you started bleeding or I would have beat you to death.” She continues to stroke my hair as I drift to sleep. I was 7 years old.

I’m waiting with my class outside.  The bell is about to ring and our teacher will come out to get us. I’m nervous. I have a Band-Aid over my left eyebrow. The marks are so everyone will know what a bad girl I am. My mom told me so. I can’t let anyone see it. I am at the back of the line. My head is down. My long hair folds down into my face. My heart races and my stomach swirls as I see our teacher open the door. She steps aside to let us in.  I follow my class as we walk past her. She sees me. My heart stops. She asks me, “What happened to your eye?” I say, “I ran into a door.” She lets me past her. I feel no relief.

Why I Stayed

I waited almost a year to file for divorce. Ironically, even though my husband claimed to be in love with this other woman, he didn't file for divorce either. He did end up getting his own place to "think" a few months after his big announcement. Everyone knew his father was dying. What we told our friends and even family was that he was going through a lot and needed some time to himself. The kids thought we were rich because we had two houses.

Through some of the work I'd done, I was pretty sure he'd never file. When asked, he would always say he loved me and didn't want to get divorced. And even though cheating had always been a deal breaker in our marriage, I didn't divorce him. I bought enough throw pillows for our bed that my friends laughed that there was no way I planned on him coming back. Once he left, the master bedroom became a very chic, very feminine room. But I didn't file for divorce.

In no particular order, I present the reasons why I stayed.

1. I was scared. I had been a stay-at-home mother for 10 years. And even though I looked fabulous on the outside, as in no-one-in-the-entire-world-knew-my-world-was-crumbling, I was scared out of my mind. 
2. We had told our children we'd always be together. I was devastated by the idea they might grow up in a broken home. It was never part of the plan. We actually told our children that they NEVER had to worry about us getting divorced. We weren't those kind of people. Literally. Divorce was not something we EVER talked about. I mean, we never even fought, much less in front of our kids. My gosh, he had given me diamond earrings and a new wedding band six weeks before he was sleeping with this new love of his life. There was no reason for our kids to think anything was wrong. 
3. I seriously thought he was mentally ill. And in my vows, which I took seriously, I said "in sickness and in health". 
4. I didn't want to be a divorced mother of two. I didn't want to be in a grocery store with two kids without a "ring on it". It might sound dumb but I just didn't.
5. His father was dying! His family had become my family. Even though many people in my life have been father figures, his father remains the closest and longest father figure to me. I didn't want to lose him either. I couldn't deal with losing him and going through a divorce at the same time. I couldn't put my children through the emotions of losing their Papa and a divorce at the same time. 
6. Logistically, it just didn't make sense. I consulted with an attorney. I knew what my rights were and I didn't like the options for divorce that I was presented with. I needed to finish school and I could just as easily do that married as I could divorced. 
7. I had a strong belief in God and I didn't believe divorce or what was going on in my family was God's will. I believe God brought us to CO and it wasn't so my husband could cheat and break up his family. I believe that if God can heal illnesses, why not hearts? Did I love my husband then, after learning what he'd done? NO! But I knew God could fix it. 
8. I didn't trust my husband to do what he said he would do. He said he'd take care of me and the kids no matter what. I just didn't believe him. It was easier to focus my energies on taking care of the kids and going to school rather than going through a divorce. My name was still on the bank accounts as long as we were married.
9. I didn't care about being right ... if I did, I would have left. I would have filed for divorce and "taken him to the cleaners". I decided to operate on the principle of doing what was good rather than doing what was right. My guiding question became, "what is good for my kids?" I got a very different answer each time I asked that (as opposed to what is "right" for my kids). 
10. I wasn't interested in anyone else. I know this sounds strange but I wasn't interested in dating so being "married" wasn't stopping me from doing anything that I wanted or needed to do. 

During the time period that we were separated, he broke it off with his girlfriend twice to try to work on our marriage. Both times, he didn't actually work on our marriage. And neither did I for that matter. I'm not sure what I was supposed to "work on" - how do you treat a spouse who has cheated on you, left you to "find himself", and could barely stand to be around his own children? I figured the fact that I hadn't physically harmed him in any way, well, that was my work. And besides, I was busy taking care of our children 24/7. During the time we were separated, he had the children over every other weekend and for a Wednesday evening dinner visit, if even that. And he lived less than three miles from us.

After the second time, three months after his father passed away, after finally telling me he wanted a divorce (although he had himself just been to an attorney but had not filed the papers) AND that I was fuckin' stupid for believing in God, I stopped staying.

I finally decided that it was no longer a "good" thing for our children for me to be married to their father who didn't want to live in the same home as them. It was no longer a "good" thing to be married to a man who had a girlfriend. It was no longer a "good" thing for my kids that their father thought that my belief in God was fuckin' stupid.

I retained the attorney that I originally consulted with and I filed. 

Labels

To label or not to label. That is the question.

My son has a label. He received his label half way through his first year of elementary school. The school did not initiate this labelling. It was something I sought as a parent, needing to understand more of what was going on with him. I didn’t tell him about his label. I continued to hide it from him until about the middle of 2^nd grade.

He’s always known he was different too. In Kinder, he used to tell me, “NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE ME” – I guess to be more accurate, he was screaming it at me. I even asked his teacher if they had taught a unit on the “uniqueness” of everyone using this terminology "no one knows what it's like to be me", or something that might explain why my little boy had this sense that he was different and alone in this world. No, they had no explanation either.

Still I resisted using the label when talking to him. I didn’t think he would understand what it meant and more importantly, I was afraid he would only see the negative parts of a label. I regularly used it when explaining things about him to other people. After all, it gave people immediate perspective and acceptance of him for who he was. I was not ashamed of my son and to me, hiding from a label means that I’m ashamed of all that he is and nothing could be farther from the truth. I love everything about my son.

When I did eventually use his label to help him understand himself, it was after reading an autobiography of a young man, an adolescent, with the same label who said hiding the label from the child was the worst thing ever, especially when the child already knows s/he is different. I ordered every children’s book I could find on the subject and slowly introduced my son to the label. He, of course, recognized himself – both the strengths and the challenges. He didn’t need anyone to label him. He saw himself on the pages of the books we read and begin to understand himself more and more. He still hated the challenges he faced just as he did before the label, he still hated himself, just as he did before the label, but we now had a common language to talk about it. He now knew why things were so hard for him. He wasn’t a failure. It was just harder for him to do some things that were easier for everyone else.

To label or not to label. That is still my question.

I compared another child, a friend’s child, to my son. I have been doing it for a couple years now never realizing it made them uncomfortable. Recently, the "setting" in which I referred to their child being like my son led to a demise in our friendship. I owned that the setting was inappropriate and I apologized for being hurtful to them. However, their fear that my son's label could somehow rub off on their son, their subsequent reaction to protect their son from such a fate (as if getting a label is that easy, as all parents with special needs kids know its not) is ultimately what leads me to question how exactly labels are viewed. 

My son is not his label and yet I learned this week that even some friends see him as just that. 

Let me explain my reality.

The first thing you will notice about my son is his smile. It will light up a room. Probably because he has these cute little dimples that go along with it. My son has an infectious laugh. If he is laughing, you will soon be laughing too. It’s that kind of laugh. It's not even that his laugh is funny sounding - its just that you want to be laughing at whatever he is laughing at. He has a wickedly funny sense of humor. He loves all sports, especially anything that involves a ball and any sport that he attempts – he gets it! I don't know how he does that. His coordination - unbelievable! He is always busy – he climbs walls as a hobby claiming to be training for American Ninja Warriors. He does not like Superheroes (he thinks they are dumb.) He loves the Dallas Cowboys and is known to cry when they lose (and even throw things – but hey, so does his dad!) He likes Nascar and if he control of the remote - we're going to be watching something sport related. He adores his big sister and would love nothing more than for her to hug him! But no, she won’t do it. He puts 110% effort into anything he chooses to do (and about 20% into anything that isn’t his choice, like most kids his age.) He loves Minecraft and has built intricate hotels and even stadiums in there, and has mastered researching what his next purchase is going to be on the internet. He even checks the reviews to see if the purchase is crap or not. He is an A student, a rule follower and everyone wants to be his friend at school. My son has big brown eyes with long eye lashes that women envy, longish brown hair that he doesn’t want to cut (or brush, much to his dad's annoyance!), even when he’s sometimes mistaken for a girl. He hates to wear jeans (and I’ve finally quit trying), preferring UnderArmour, Nike, Reebok and Adidas athletic wear, and he wears out his shoes before he ever outgrows them. Funny thing is half the time, he's bare foot outside. My son also has autism. Or as he says, "My brain just works differently." 

Easy to Leave

I'm easy to leave.

My husband and I met at the therapist’s office while he was on his “business trip” to discuss the pending state of our marriage and family. It remained clear that he didn’t want to make any decisions. He didn’t want a divorce but he didn’t think he could leave his girlfriend. He didn’t want to hurt her. His family – the collateral damage = he literally could not see that he was doing this to anyone but me. He had not done anything to his children.

During subsequent visits to the therapist’s office, in addition to the now infamous phrase, “I want to want my family”, another one resonates with me … easy to leave.

That’s me.

He couldn’t hurt his girlfriend. She needed him. Never mind that she had her own husband and family. She needed him.

Me … his tough as nails wife. The mother of his children. The woman he knew as a survivor. The woman he thought of as “perfect” – literally. After all, he proclaimed to still love me. I could handle this. Even through my tears, he knew I’d be fine. I was always okay. The therapist asked him, “so A is easy to leave?” and he said, “I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way.” But his answer in a quiet whisper, "yes." And then, "it's sad to say that."

My father walked out on my family – my mom and my brother, when I was 5 years old. I don’t remember a lot about him except that they fought a lot. They had an on and off again relationship. Being raised Jehovah’s Witness, when he left, I was then taught that he was tantamount to the Devil himself so I feared anything that represented him. I was told that someday he would come back and try to kidnap me from my mother, which would then interfere with my eternal life in their Paradise they had been proselytizing about since their very existence (they're still waiting, by the way.) He actually did come back one day, when I was in 2^nd grade. I ran into my house screaming, shaking, and frantically tried to call my mom at work but kept getting a busy signal. I was terrified that I was going to die.

I met my father a couple years back for the first time. He didn’t look like the Devil at all. I still haven’t asked why he left. I figured the explanation in my head is as good as any he could tell me. Also, as a general rule, I don't ask people why. It just gives them an excuse to lie to you. He has another daughter that just graduated high school and had he stuck around for me, she wouldn’t exist and I kind of like her. She’s a sweetheart. And I like me, just the way I am, so we’re all good.

The January after I graduated from high school, I moved out of my mother’s home into a tiny one-bedroom apartment. The fall before, I had been “disfellowshipped” from the family religion for having an inappropriate relationship with a worldly boy (translation=I had sex) and even at home, my parents would barely speak to me unless it was “can I have your car insurance money?” Not being allowed to even share meals together, according to their religious convictions, they couldn’t even ask me to “pass the salt”.

I was working full time at a cellular phone company and I had a car, and enough money for an apartment. When I moved out, I had a twin sized bed, a blue wing back chair and a small black ceramic cat. Oh, and my clothes. I made a trip to Walmart to buy some “stuff” – towels, plates, toilet paper. And I was on my own.

Since that date in January 1993, I can count the number of times that I have spoken to my mother on one hand. I have seen her twice – once at McDonald’s, another time to introduce her to my husband and children. She made it clear that day that I was not welcome to return to her home, only my children and husband were. They declined. 

Easy to leave … that’s me.

How about you? What unconventional things are you known for?

Kirk's Dik Dik

I discovered the Kirk’s Dik Dik on a trip to the Denver Zoo following a painful life event three years ago this week. The Kirk’s Dik Dik is a delicate antelope that weighs a mere 10-12 lbs and mates for life. I still remembering studying these animals, reading the information about them and wondering how a female antelope could score a mate for life and I couldn’t. What was wrong with me?

 The day before the zoo trip, my husband of 10 years, the father of our children who had just days before entered 1st and 4th grade, announced that he had been having an affair all summer long. Not only that, but he loved her, and didn’t think he wanted to be a family man anymore. I remember him saying he wanted to want his family. It was a phrase I would hear often. After being a stay at home mom since our daughter was born, I was faced with the knowledge that my husband no longer wanted the life we had built. I had no idea what to do. It was clear that he expected me to leave him. Hypothetically, that’s what any self-respecting woman would do.

 It was a Friday - the worst day of the week for bad news. I consulted with the family therapist we had worked with earlier in the year when our son was being diagnosed with autism (jackissomethingelse). It was not fair to me to have to deal with him in his “condition” – his “I want to want my family” condition. It was not fair to me to deal with him while he was pining away for some other woman. I told him he needed to leave our home. We told the kids he was going on an extended business trip.

With him out of the house, I had another more urgent issue to deal with. My children. They had no idea what had really happened. My husband had “coincidentally” started his affair on a business trip that started a day after learning that his father was dying. Was this really what this was about? We had moved to Colorado because of family drama over an affair in the family business back in Texas. Was he acting out because no one shared his indignation when this happened in the family business? I googled “what to do when your husband cheats” – and overwhelming learned – don’t make rash decisions. Based on that, I decided to keep quiet. I told one friend in another state, in another city from where our family lived, what was really going on. To my children, I needed to act like everything was normal. I need to really act like he was just on a business trip.

It was the hardest weekend of my entire of life, hands down. Were there times that I fell on my knees in the privacy of the closet and cried until I couldn’t breathe? Absolutely. But I would hear a knock at my bedroom door. I had to get up.

There were so many things I had waited to do. Thinking back now, I think I spent 10 years of my life waiting but that weekend, I didn’t know that. All I knew then is that I needed to keep my children busy. I went big – I needed things that didn’t just distract the kids, but distracted me.

On Saturday, I drove to Denver to take the kids Indoor Skydiving – not outdoor. I have never had a desire to skydive outdoors. Indoor Skydiving was always one of those things I wanted to do as a family and I suddenly realized that no matter what my husband did, my children were my family. There would not be any waiting around for him to make time for us to do the fun things I wanted to do. He had always had half days off on Fridays but had just spent the entire prior summer spending those days with another woman instead of with his children during their summer off from school. It turns out, we needed reservations which I made for the following Saturday. I quietly accepted that my life had changed. It didn’t matter if we stayed together or not, I knew things would never be the same. I would never wait for him again.

Our Saturday and Sunday continued. We went both to Brunswick Zone and the Denver Zoo. While at the Denver Zoo, I saw these peculiar but beautiful tiny antelope called the Kirk’s Dik Dik. Since that day, I have learned that there are just as many women who are uncommitted, game-changers, dare-I-say-cheaters, disloyal, or flat out selfish.

By Sunday night, I had a plan. I would go back to school. I wouldn’t wait for him to decide what he wanted. By Monday, 72 hours after his big announcement, I was a student, effectively a single mother, and a survivor, once again.