Finding my voice again

 

It had been five years since I left, fifteen months since the divorce, a week since he'd stayed with the kids and me, and mere hours since I last cried about it all again. Motherfucker.

I was in desperate need of a breakup movie that didn’t end tied in a neat little bow in the form of a new relationship with a great guy who will be her kids’ fabulous (probably rich) new stepdad. Because that wasn’t going to be my story. 

I needed a redemption message where the protagonist is normal, not gorgeous. Funny, but dark. She was probably interesting before she had kids, but, well…kids. Strong. Superhuman really, but tired as fuck from doing it all alone. And I mean really alone, not dad is around on the weekends, shows up for games and band concerts or every other weekend. Or dad takes the kids in the summer alone. I mean, dad didn’t come home to support and missed one of two family therapy sessions (phone calls of course) when our fifteen-year-old spent a week in a mental hospital alone. When dad has to care for the kids without me at my house so I can travel they call me upset every day alone. Like really, really alone. The alone has been immense.

I needed a story where this fabulously normal mom who was making the world turn overcame the five years’ later sting when she found out (on the internet) that he had moved his 12 years’ younger girlfriend into their jointly-owned, former family home MONTHS AGO without a word to his already existing, apparently completely discarded “family”. And this rocked her world in a way she’s only beginning to understand because she thought they were making choices for their “family” for the last five years, though regularly disruptive and gut-wrenching for her, that were in the kids’ best interests. Turns out not.

Also turns out that movie doesn’t exist. You can see it doesn’t quit fit a genre. Unless the dedicated but sort of old now single mom of teenagers lands an independently wealthy French pilot (because then he’d be gone a lot and she really doesn’t need a man making a mess of her life but the accent is nice), it’s not a romcom. It’s certainly not a romance and this tired, sad, and furious woman has too much self-control to make it a thriller or honestly much of a drama.

But maybe I can find a story in all of this, invite the humor to match the horror. Maybe I can find my voice again. I had one before my life was twisted to suit the needs of everyone around me, choking my literal sense of self. Maybe I can tell a story that another woman, many women, need to hear about regret and betrayal, loss and redemption. This is where I am today. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.