It's hard when you're busy

 I've found it harder and harder to write lately. When I was raging, the feelings and therefore the words were easy. Because it was justified rage and that's all it was in the moment. I always say that anger is nearly always a mask for other emotions. As rage does, it started to fade into more honest, and far more complicated emotions. 

I found myself in an alternating loop of writings that felt like petty drags on someone who doesn't care and baring deep wounds to my core, inflicted by someone who doesn't care. Maybe he cares, you say. Maybe he too is struggling to navigate this new normal (that he created by pretending he didn't have his girlfriend living in our house with him until I figured it out via texts to my kids, Instagram feeds, and kissy videos)! 

I say nah. If he cared, he would have kept up with the two weeks where he texted our daughter daily (though not our son because that's not as satisfying because he isn't as interested in the brag photos of the amazing places his dad is vising that aren't where his kids are). If he cared, he would have said ONCE that he was sorry any of us were hurting, not just reiterated over and over that he thought about this and made the decision not to tell anyone consciously and somehow for our own good? I've tried to understand how he thought he was going to bridge the distance between sharing this momentous news about my children's home and its new inhabitant and our visit scheduled roughly two months later to said home...but he swears he thought through all the details. I'm not sure where my dogs eating her cats factored in, but sure. Well thought out. 

And if he cared, I would not be at the top of his growing pile of discarded people from old lives that he's literally running away from 100 miles at a time. Just over a year ago, in April 2024, his Colorado running friends, people I had met at the end of a race maybe once or twice, started texting me. He wasn't responding. They were worried. They'd reached out via text, called, someone even stopped by the house, where his vehicle sat indicating he was home or not far from home, but he wouldn't answer the door. I got texts and calls from three different people around this time. Concerned for their friend. Who couldn't be bothered. 

I responded. Because I'm a decent human. He's alive, I promise. He's ordering shit on Amazon. He's spoken to me recently enough that I am certain he's not dead. I've passed your messages along. I'm really sorry. 

This wasn't new, by the way. For years, since I left and stopped micromanaging that relationship for him, and because he he couldn't be bothered, he has ignored his parents' texts and calls. Not until he needed something did they hear from hm. He hasn't called his eldest in 54 months. I couldn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. 

But I hadn't yet been discarded. And I now I know the whole of it. 

So this is what it's like. Together nearly TWENTY YEARS, in each others' lives in some fashion for more than twenty-five. Mother of his children.

This is a man who looked me up after he saw my picture on a website after not having spoken for three or four of those years, reached out, remembered my birthday, pursued me relentlessly, then discarded me over and over and over until now. I'm queen of the pile for now. 

He was busy. Alone, I keep a household with two active teenagers, best friends and boyfriends coming and going, camp after camp, running a busy team at work away from my home during the end of the fiscal year in the most chaotic environment you can imagine. Making sure not a single plate drops. And he can't reply to a text message because he's been a little busy. 

So yeah, it's hard when you're busy, I guess. And it's hard to be discarded after being so celebrated and still have any self-respect at the end of it. You'll see. And right now, it's hard resting at the top of this heap trying to keep my dignity and sort through the emotions that aren't always rage anymore while living my life, doing my job, and raising our kids all alone. But thankfully, I can do hard things.