Enough is Enough!

When I am sick and cannot do anything else, I take time to analyse myself. That is one of the practices advised by my therapist.

It is interesting to look deep inside and try to understand why I do things the way I do and why I have done things certain ways in the past.

Few weeks ago, one of my children asked why I took so long to leave the marriage and why I kept “pretending” everything was ok and playing the happy family in the beginning of the separation. My answer was vague, because if I am honest with myself, I would have to search too deep to understand the way I dealt with things from the moment I knew things were over.

It has been over 3 years of my separation, for the first year of it I was living in denial, I avoided thinking of the true reasons why I asked him to leave. He had told me that the love was never there to begin with, towards the end of the marriage, he often mentioned his regrets about getting married and having children. I wanted to be mature about it, we cannot force someone to love us or to enjoy the life they have with us, the children needed him in their lives, and I wanted to make sure they had that.

Was it easy? Absolutely not! Every visit was hard on me and for few of the children, but the little ones loved it. I made efforts to be a “normal” split family. I was brave to have ended the relationship and now I wanted to be brave to put the past behind and do the best I could to give my children a good upbringing. I chose to look passed the damage his choices had already caused, maybe one day my children would appreciate that.

Was it possible to pretend the past did not happen? To see my children suffering and not seek for help just to have an imaginary situation that eventually would turn against us?

It took counselling sessions, women’s aid, and authorities to help me to be able to see the damage the “avoidance” was going to cause on me and my children.

From the very beginning I thought the Christian thing to do was to forgive and move on, I still think that, but my understanding of that was naïve, I remember the day my eyes were opened, summer 2020, I felt sick, how could I have believed so many lies? As I started learning more about everything that had happened, instead of feeling anger toward him, I blamed myself for not acting back at the beginning, I will have to deal with the consequences of that for the rest of my life.

 It is not about forgiveness, because you don’t need to welcome a forgiven person into your life, them being forgiven doesn’t mean they have truly changed their ways and if there is a slight chance they could do damage again, to protect yourself from future pain, your loved ones from harm, the best thing to do is to avoid all contact.

Of course, not everyone will see it that way, but I cannot control how others feel.

Having had a child attempt suicide, other suffering from depression and anxiety and having had to experience homelessness, I couldn’t care less about what anyone thinks of me or my situation anymore, for the past 3 years I have lost friends and have gained new ones, some disappeared of my life because most people would not know how to relate to the issues that comes with a family that have had so much trauma in their lives.

It is time for me to stand up and say, enough is enough. I no longer live my life to please others, especially those who deceived and hurt myself and my children.