Three steps back.
Khalil Gibran once wrote that joy and sorrow drink from the same well.
My therapist says I’m sensitive. She says I probably didn’t get the attention I
needed growing up.
Maybe both things are true.
It was December 20th, 2024. I had just survived my first week before
winter break as a public school teacher.
If you’ve never experienced the week before winter break in an elementary
school, imagine the stress a mom feels right before Christmas trying to make
sure everything is magical and perfect… and then multiply it by about a
thousand. Kids bouncing off the walls. Noise louder than a Van Halen concert in
the 80s. Energy everywhere.
By the time I got home, all I wanted was a hot bath, earplugs, and a
blackout mask.
Except I still had to make the Christmas magic happen at my own house
too.
Instead, I collapsed on my bed and didn’t move.
When my partner got home, there was no “How was your day?”
No “Can I get you anything?”
If I’m being honest… he never did that. Not once. He never asked what was
going on in my life.
Instead, he started in with the same old complaint: my new job took
attention away from him.
He said he “can’t do this anymore.”
The argument turned to Christmas. Apparently, I hadn’t communicated every
detail of everything I had handled for the holiday.
The irony?
I had handled Christmas every single year. Every stocking. Every plan.
Every little piece of magic.
One year he had exactly one task… something we’d talked about
weeks in advance…and he forgot. I ended up running to the nearest open gas
station at 2 a.m. trying to find candy and little things to fill stockings.
But somehow, I was the problem.
I even showed him the text message thread marked “read”… listing
everything I’d already taken care of.
It didn’t matter.
Because it was never really about being good enough.
Honestly, I still don’t know what it was about.
What I do know is this:
As I lay there on the bed, trying to calm my nervous system after one of
the craziest weeks of my life, I realized something very clearly.
After everything I had done year after year… being a full-time mom, a
brand-new public school teacher, and running a small business…I did not
deserve what he was laying at my feet.
What I deserved was a hug.
What I deserved was empathy.
So I told him something I had never said before.
“I can’t do this anymore either.”
I told him I had never felt more lonely in my life.
I told him the way he spoke to me made him feel more like an enemy than a
friend… let alone a lover or husband.
And if my efforts weren’t enough, maybe he should go find someone who
could make him happy.
We only live this life once.
He looked stunned.
“That’s not what I was expecting,” he said.
Why?
Because every other time he had said he couldn’t do this anymore,
it had worked like a threat. A way to make me scramble, to prove myself, to try
harder so he wouldn’t leave.
But in that moment, something had shifted.
I wasn’t afraid anymore.
The pattern was suddenly crystal clear.
Gaslighting. Manipulation. Full stop.
A few days later he asked if I still felt the same.
Nothing had changed.
Not one thing.
He still carried around the same chip on his shoulder, as if I had killed
his puppy.
What followed felt like jumping from the frying pan straight into the
fire. I went from overwhelming stress at work to overwhelming stress in my own
home…the one place that’s supposed to be a safe haven.
The place I had always tried to make safe for him.
After bad days at work, I gave him space.
I supported him at competitions, events, wherever he needed me.
But that support never came back the other way.
Some of the things he said in those weeks felt like they might break me
forever.
He told me he had only married me because it was “the right thing to do.”
The irony?
I had told him I never wanted to get married again. I was perfectly happy
the way things were.
At the time, he insisted he never wanted to be with anyone else.
So what was true?
He moved out quickly.
Left the kids with me.
Emptied the bank accounts.
Not once did he ask if we would be okay.
Not once did he ask if I needed help.
But what he tells people about me now is… astonishing.
The truth I eventually had to face was simple.
I gave myself to the wrong person.
He was always the wrong person.
Still, some weeks the grief shows up out of nowhere.
Weeks like this one.
I find myself crying out loud sometimes:
Please let this go.
Please let me go.
I just want to move forward.
I don’t love him anymore.
I don’t hate him either.
I just want the hurt to stop.
Some days I tell myself the grief is about never really knowing what it
feels like to be loved fully and completely.
Some days I tell myself healing just takes time.
Other days I think it’s simply my nervous system returning to old
pathways.
But there’s another truth too.
I have been loved fully.
By myself.
And something else is true.
Enough time has passed.
When you realize you didn’t actually mean that much to someone, it
becomes surprisingly easy to flip the switch on them too.
I never long for him.
In fact, my body is physically repulsed by him now.
He doesn’t even look the same to me.
Love blinders are real.
And once you see clearly, it’s hard to put them back on.
Still, grief is strange.
Even when life is going well, it can tap you on the shoulder at the most
inconvenient times.
Standing in line to pick up food for the kids.
On a date with a very handsome, kind man.
Greeting students at the door in the mornings.
Explaining to a room full of kids how art changed the moment the camera
was invented.
And then one day it
hit me.
Maybe this is okay.
Maybe all of it is okay.
Just like art evolves over time.
You can see the wind in The Starry Night.
This grief is just teaching me how to paint my life differently.
With creativity.
With whimsy.
With bold uniqueness.
I have faith in my future.
I can feel it evolving.
Learning to stand on my own two feet.
Making choices that are right for me… without shrinking them to protect
someone else’s fragile ego.
And something tells me the painting ahead is going to be beautiful.
